Isle of Glass

by Tarr, Judith

  “Oh? How sad." Brother Reynaud’s eyes did not match his words; they glittered, eager. Like a hound on the scent, Jehan thought.

  Hound. Grey cowl, white robe. Jehan remembered dimly a name he had overheard, a word or two describing a habit and an Order. Hounds. Canes. Canes Dei. Hounds of God.

  He went cold. His fingers clenched on the reins; the chestnut jibbed, protesting.

  He made himself speak calmly. "Tell me, Brother. I can’t seem to place your habit. Is it a new Order?”

  Reynaud glanced at him and smiled again. “New enough. The Order of Saint Paul.”

  The Paulines. They were the hunting hounds of Rome, seekers and destroyers of aught that imperiled the Church. Heretics. Unbelievers. Witches and sorcerers.

  Alf rode unheeding, his white head bare, the grey mare dancing beneath him. Someone called out to him, admiring his mount; he replied, his voice clear and strong and inhumanly beautiful. No one could see his eyes as they were—those, he blurred, by subtle witchery—but that was a small thing to the totality of him. He looked what he was, elf-born, alien.

  The King had summoned him. The mare wheeled and fell in beside the red charger. They rode on so, horses and men matched in height, but the King heavier, slower, earthbound.

  “The King has taken to him,” Reynaud observed.

  Jehan’s heart hammered against his ribs. He could smell the danger in this man, a reek of blood and fire. “I'm not surprised,” he said. “He was quite the most brilliant monk in our abbey. And the most saintly.”

  Reynaud did not react at all to that thrust. “Your Abbot must have been sorry to see him go.”

  “He was. But Bishop Aylmer asked for Brother Alfred, and it was best for him to leave. He needed to stretch his wings a little.”

  “Strong wings they must be, to attain a King in their first flight.”

  “That’s what the Abbot thought. And Dom Morwin’s right about most things.”

  “Was it your Dom Morwin who admitted this paragon to the abbey?”

  “Oh, no. Dom Morwin’s only been Abbot for five years. Brother Alf came when he was a baby.”

  The gleam in Reynaud’s eye had brightened. “Alf, you call him?”

  Jehan swallowed and tried to smile. “There are a lot of Saxons in our abbey. And of course there’s the great scholar, the one who wrote the Gloria Dei. With two Alfreds in the place, one had to have his name shortened.”

  “Ah, yes. Alfred of St. Ruan’s. I hadn’t noticed the coincidence. Is he still alive?”

  “Still. Though he doesn’t go out any more, nor write much. He’s getting quite old, and his health isn’t very good.”

  “That’s a pity. Your young Brother is named after him, then?”

  Jehan nodded. “Takes after his scholarship, too. He hated to see Brother Alf go. But the Abbot insisted. There are other teachers, he said, and one of them is the world.”

  “True enough,” Alf said.

  Jehan drew his breath in sharply. Intent on the fabric of truth and falsehood, he had not heard the approaching hooves. Alf’s eyes looked darker than usual, more grey than silver.

  He smiled at Jehan and said, “I heard you talking about me. Base flattery, all of it. I'm really quite an ordinary young nuisance; my Abbot decided he’d had enough of me and inflicted me on the poor Bishop.”

  “Both of us,” Jehan put in. “What did the King say, Brother Alf?”

  Alf shrugged. “A word or two. He wanted to buy Fara.”

  He smoothed the mare’s wind-ruffled mane.

  “Did you say yes?”

  “Of course not. I said she was only lent to me; he said that he understood; we both agreed that she’s the most beautiful creature afoot.” She arched her neck; he stroked it and laughed a little. “Aye, you are, and well you know it.”

  Reynaud had withdrawn in silence. But his presence remained, like a faint hint of corruption; surely he strained to hear what they said. Jehan wanted to shout a warning, but he dared not.

  Their horses moved together; knee brushed knee. Alf gripped Jehan’s shoulder for an instant, as a friend will, saying something meaningless. But Jehan caught the thought behind, the surge of comfort.

  Alf knew. He was on guard. And the Hounds of God, for all their fire and slaughter, had never caught one of the true elf-blood. That he was sure of, with Alun’s surety.

  o0o

  Alf started awake. It was very late, with a scent of dawn in the air. Jehan’s warm body lay against him, dreaming boy-dreams. His own had been far less gentle, a wild confusion of fire and darkness, Alun’s black boar and a pack of ghost-white hounds, and a lion transfixed with a flaming sword.

  He lay still as the cold sweat dried from his body. He had not cried out; no one had awakened. Thea crouched close in hound-shape, glaring as she had glared on that first night.

  “Thea,” he breathed. “I thought you’d gone back to Rhiyana.”

  Her lip curled in a snarl. She was exhausted and in a foul temper. I set out for St. Ruan’s, and traveled all this black day and half the night, and found myself outside this tent. With Alun in my mind all the while, telling me about the book he read today and chanting the Offices.

  You knew it would happen, Alf said in his mind.

  Her hackles rose; she bared her teeth. I put up every barrier I had. I went down to the very bottom of my power. And I hunted a trail that led me in a long arc back to you.

  Alf sighed. I hoped you'd be wise enough to go home.

  No!

  He winced. Her anger was piercing. I’m sorry, he said.

  Don't pity me!

  I don't. He drew the blanket up to his chin.

  She lay down beside him. He went rigid. Her body was beast-warm. But her mind was a woman’s.

  Her annoyance pricked him, less painful than her anger but more shameful. Don't be so ridiculous. You never minded it when I slept with Jehan.

  But he doesn't know—

  No more do you. She rested her chin on his chest and closed her eyes. All her barriers had firmed against him.

  A test, Brother, he told himself. Think of it as a test.

  By infinite degrees he relaxed. She was only a hound. A sleeping hound, worn out with her long fruitless chase.

  Boldly he stroked her ears. She did not respond. With the air of a man plunging into deadly peril, he laid his arm over her flank. It was sleek-furred, wholly canine; her heart beat as a hound’s will, swift, slow, swift, slow, in time with her breathing.

  He loosed his breath in a long sigh. He had done it. He had mastered her, and himself.

  Perhaps.

  12

  Alf rode most of the way to Carlisle at the King’s side. It was not the place he would have chosen, but Richard would not let him ride in obscurity behind the Bishop. “You interest me,” the King would say when he protested. “Tell me another tale, Brother!”

  And Alf would obey. Or Richard would tell tales of his own: accounts of his travels and of his many battles, of the sea, and of the lands of the East.

  “Have you ever traveled?” he asked.

  “A little," Alf replied. “I went to Canterbury once, and to Paris to the schools.”

  “Paris! Why, you’ve never been out of the dooryard. When I get these troubles out of the way, I’m going Crusading again. This damp, dripping land—pah!” He spat. “I’m hungry for the hot sun and the dust and the bare hills of Outremer.”

  Alf could see them in his eyes, a fierce pitiless country, yet beautiful. He yearned after it as a man yearns after a woman.

  “Jerusalem!” he said. "They kept me out of it, those fools and cowards who called themselves my allies; and I had to take a craven’s peace, and smile, and bow to the Infidel. But I’ll take the city yet. I told him that, the Sultan Saladin. He’s a black heathen, but he’s a knight and a gentleman. He laughed and said that I could try, and then we’d know who was the better general.”

  “I’d like to see Jerusalem,” murmured Alf. “And Byzantium.”
/>   “That city I never saw. The Great City they call it, because its proper name is so much of a mouthful.”

  “Constantinopolis. Constantine’s City, Jewel of the East. I’ve always wanted to see the dome of Hagia Sophia and the Golden Horn; the caravans coming in from Cathay, and the ships sailing west with the wealth of the Indies.”

  “Why, Brother! you’re a dreamer, too.”

  Alf laughed a little, surprised. “I suppose I am. That’s why I learned Greek, to read about the East.”

  “You know Greek?”

  “Yes, Sire. A little.”

  “And Arabic?”

  “A few words. Maybe.”

  “God’s bones! I’ve found myself a wonder. When I go back to Outremer, my friend, I’ll take you with me. We’ll take Jerusalem, and we’ll visit the Emperor in Constantinople, and we’ll be lords of the East.”

  When Richard was delighted, he reminded Alf of Jehan. Alf smiled, and blinked. For a moment he had seen a strange thing, the flash of sun on blue water; and scented an air that had never known the grey chill of Anglia. Then the image was gone.

  Richard had looked back, inspecting the line of march; their speech thereafter turned to other things.

  o0o

  They reached Carlisle in the evening after a day of bitter rain. To Alf it seemed a grim city, walled about with dark red stone, dripping with wet. Its people had come out to greet the King, but their welcome was muted, the dour welcome of the North; they gave their liege-lord precisely his due, no more and no less.

  The Earl of the city met them at the gate of the castle, with a sour smile; it little pleased him to play host to four hundred of the King’s men, and many more besides, come from all about to attend Richard’s court.

  Richard’s smile was wider and brighter, but with more than a hint of malice. “Hugo,” he had told Alf, “has been paying me tribute with one hand and stroking my beloved brother with the other. One fine day I’ll catch him between the jaws of the trap he’s made. But meanwhile I’ll clean out his larder and use up his hoard, and make him thank me for the privilege.”

  Yet to all appearances the Earl received his King with proper courtesy, and the army dispersed itself about the town.

  Aylmer lodged in the Bishop’s palace near the cathedral. Bishop Foulques loved Aylmer no better than the Earl loved the King, but he had had the grace to withdraw to the abbey near the walls; his dwelling was somewhat more spacious than the castle and considerably more comfortable.

  Aylmer’s attendants, Alf among them, were not forced like the King’s to settle as best they could about the great hall; rooms were allotted them, and beds. Alf shared a cell with Jehan and with a tongue-tied young priest, and with the Pauline monk.

  Reynaud’s doing, Alf was certain. There were others of his Order about, pale shapes in grey cowls, with watchful eyes.

  I feel like a cat in a kennel, Alf thought.

  Thea made herself comfortable on one of the cell’s two beds, to Father Amaury’s great discomfiture. Hounds have only teeth, she pointed out. You have teeth and claws.

  If I dare to use them, said Alf.

  Reynaud approached her. She showed her teeth; he retreated hastily. She laughed.

  o0o

  They did not keep monastic hours here. But Alf’s body, attuned to waking in deep night for Matins, could not lie sluggishly abed until dawn. In the black dark before it, he slipped carefully from the bed he shared with Jehan, gathered up a small bundle, and glided out of the cell.

  Only the cooks were awake, baking the new day’s bread. The bath behind the kitchen was deserted. Alf lit the lamp over the nearest wooden tub and took up the yoked buckets by it, passing through the warm rich-scented kitchen to the well. He was seen but not remarked, a monk in cloak and hood indulging in the eccentricity of a bath.

  It was not Thea alone who could warm water without fire, though this was far easier, a mere tubful. He folded himself into it, sighing with pleasure. Let the saints have their holy filth; this ill-made monk would be clean.

  He washed swiftly but with fastidious care, rose and dried himself, and took up the bundle he had brought. For a long moment he regarded it. The brown habit was his better one, almost new, yet the near-newness only made it the harsher to the touch.

  Slowly Alf drew it on. Without tunic or trews to cushion it, it was nigh as galling as a hair-shirt; and his skin, once inured to it, yearned for the caress of princely linen.

  He bound the cincture tightly, settled the cowl over his shoulders, let the hood fall back. On the floor lay the last of the bundle’s contents, a fine sharp razor. A stroke or six, and Brother Alfred would have returned wholly, from bare feet to bare crown.

  He did not know he sighed until he had done it, and then he did not know why. Kneeling by the tub, he groped for the razor.

  It eluded his hand. At length, piqued, he turned to look for it.

  He had gained a companion, a slight figure in a habit like his own, but within the deep cowl shone a smile he knew all too well, full of dancing mockery. “Returning to the womb, little Brother?” asked Thea.

  He held out his hand, tight-lipped.

  She folded her arms. The razor glittered in her hand, close to the merest suggestion of a curve.

  Alf’s breath hissed between his teeth.

  Her head tilted; her smile retreated to the corner of her mouth. “It’s a pity, you know. To make yourself ugly for God—as if He could care for such trifles.”

  “It’s done, as you say, for God, whether He heeds it or no; and to mark me as the Church’s own.”

  “A slave of Rome. How dramatic. It’s still ridiculous, little Brother. Why not make a real sacrifice? Like the pagan priests—or like the monk, the one they all call a heretic—”

  “Origen.”

  “Origen,” she agreed lightly. “God’s eunuch. Now that is an irrevocable choice.”

  Alf spoke with care. “I should like to finish what I have begun. If you please—”

  “If you insist,” she said, "I’ll help you. Or are my hands too foul to perform so sacred a rite? Schismatic Greek that I am, unconsecrated by any vows, and—ah, horrors!—a female.”

  She would prick him into a rage, and only laugh the harder. He struck on his own account with all his native sweetness. “I should not touch a woman, nor she touch me. But in the circumstances, I hope you have a light hand.”

  Light as air, and as gentle as her tongue was cruel. “What lovely skin you have. Soft as a child’s. And your hair—I know women who’d kill to have hair half so thick or half so fine.”

  “Including yourself?”

  She could even mock his self-possession, won as it was through bitter battle. “Why, little Brother! My touch hasn’t struck you speechless. You’ve even mustered a tiny bit of wit. If I were a proper woman, I’d swoon with astonishment.”

  “If I were a proper monk, I'd exorcise you as a devil.”

  She was done, the razor secreted somewhere within the pilfered habit. She laid her cool hands on his shaven crown, a touch light almost to intangibility, yet it held him rooted.

  “Believe me, Brother Alfred of Ynys Witrin, you are a very proper monk. Now you even look it, though I never needed the proof.”

  His head came up with the swiftness of temper. But she was gone, vanished. There remained only a brown habit, crumpled on the floor.

  “I need it!” he cried.

  The air returned no answer.

  o0o

  Since that first morning in the camp, Alf had served Aylmer each day at Mass. The Bishop called upon him to do the same in Carlisle in the small chapel.

  Its walls were of that grim red stone which seemed to have been dyed with blood, but arras of eastern work concealed them, and the furnishings were rich, treasures from the first Crusade. Alf sensed both their age and their foreignness; the silver chalice with its graven Apostles held a flavor of old Rome.

  As he aided Aylmer in disrobing, a very small page in royal livery slipped th
rough the door. His eyes upon Alf were wide and rather frightened, though it was to the Bishop that he bowed and said, “My lord, His Majesty wishes to borrow Brother Alfred.”

  “His Majesty knows that he doesn’t need to ask,” said Aylmer. “Tell him Brother Alfred will be along directly.”

  The child bowed again, shot Alf a last glance, and fled.

  Alf smiled a little, wryly, and laid the Bishop’s alb in the press. Aylmer watched him with narrow eyes until he straightened and turned.

  “Brother,” the Bishop said, “what would you do if I gave you to the King?”

  Alf stood still. “In what capacity, my lord?”

  “As a clerk, to begin with. Richard needs a good secretary. And,” Aylmer added, “a friend.”

  “Am I competent to be the King’s friend?”

  “You’ve been doing well enough at it. He likes you, Brother. Richard deals well with men and knows how to make them love him; but he seldom returns the favor.”

  “You know what people are saying.”

  Aylmer snorted. “Of course I know. And I’ll be frank with you: there’s substance in it, as far as Richard is concerned. He has a weakness for a fair face. But he doesn't stoop to force. He’ll do no more than you let him do.”

  “My lord,” Alf said, "I’ve only felt desire once. And that...that was for a woman.” His cheeks were flaming, but he kept his head up. “I don’t think the King will endanger me. Not that way. But I had thought—I had hoped—I am a simple monk, cloister-bred. My Abbot sent me to be your servant. Not to become a King’s favorite.”

  “You think so?" Aylmer asked. “I give Dom Morwin a shade more credit. He entrusted you with the Rhiyanan’s message. I doubt he expected your errand to end with its delivery.”

  Alf bowed his head. No. Morwin would not have expected that, old fox that he was, knowing Richard’s nature and the nature of the message.

  And that of the messenger.

  “With whip and spur he drives me into the world." Alf looked up. Aylmer’s gaze was unsurprised, understanding. “He drives me straight into the lion’s den.”

  A smile touched the Bishop’s eye. “This Lion only devours the weak. And that, Brother, you are not. I’m not afraid for you. If you fear for yourself—” He lifted the silver cross from the other’s breast and held it in the light. “This is stronger than armor. Trust in it.” He let it fall. “You’ll sleep here and you’ll serve me at Mass, but you belong to the King. Stay with him. Serve him. Be his friend.”