Isle of Glass

by Tarr, Judith

  “But more of dialectic than any man ought, let alone one of the Night’s brood.” Adam shook his head. “Brother, I have done all that I can. There are those who urge me to resort to force. Is this what you would have?”

  This too Alf had heard before. Without a tremor he said, “The answer would be the same.”

  Adam looked down at him where he sat on his pallet, a dim figure by candlelight. He stared back without expression.

  He had eaten nothing since he was taken; he felt light, hollow, almost heedless. It has become a game, this constant resistance, four days and four nights of fruitless questioning. The other was haggard, unshaven, shadow-eyed; when he touched his own face, he could feel the jut of bones beneath the skin.

  “Brother,” he said, “I won't confess to a crime I haven’t committed. Not even to spare you pain.”

  “Not even to spare yourself?”

  Alf shook his head.

  “I will not be your questioner in that extremity,” Adam warned him. “Brother Reynaud will have the honor. He is well known for his skill.”

  “I'm not surprised,” Alf murmured.

  “That was not charitable.”

  “Neither is he.”

  Alf lay back. There was a pause. As it stretched to breaking, the other laid an icy hand on his brow. “You are very warm. But you do not look fevered.”

  He held the candle close. Alf turned his face away from it.

  “Strange,” Adam said. “In this room, in this season, you should be blue with cold. Yet I have never seen you shiver.”

  Alf shivered then; but Adam shook his head. “Too late, Brother. Your Master has shielded you well against the banes of your kind, cold iron and sacred things. Why, I wonder, has he omitted to take away the fire of Hell that warms you?”

  “If it were Hell’s fire,” Alf said through clenched teeth, “it would sear your hand.”

  “Could it, Brother?”

  “It is not Hell’s fire.”

  “Then, pray, what may it be?”

  “My own body’s warmth. That is all.”

  “So simple a thing, to be so inexplicable.”

  “Inexplicable?” Alf asked. “Hardly. My fiery humors are in full blaze. I’m being held against my will; I’m charged with black sorcery; now you threaten me with torture. Can you wonder that my anger keeps me warm?”

  “If all men were so made, we would have no need of clothing. Wrath alone would suffice.”

  “Though not for modesty,” Alf said.

  Adam was silent, his eyelids lowered, but he continued to watch Alf from beneath them.

  “St. Ruan’s Abbey,” he said at last. “You were raised there, you say. Have you considered that if you persist in your obstinacy and are punished for it, your Brothers will suffer? For since it is what it is, where it is—surely its monks knew what dwelt among them: a creature of that elder race which ruled there before Christ’s Gospel was borne into Anglia.”

  “My Brothers are guilty of no fault. They have seen nothing, recognized nothing, for I am no more and no less than any one of them.”

  Adam shook his head slowly, half in denial, half in sorrowful rebuke.

  Alf sat up. “They are not guilty. There are no Elder Folk.”

  “There, Brother, you lie outright. For I have seen them. With my own eyes I have looked on them.”

  “But not in Ynys Witrin, Brother Adam. That I know. They do not haunt St. Ruan’s cloister. Christ is ruler there; his cross rises above the Tor.” Alf smote his hands together. “Accuse me if you must. But in the name of the God who made us both, let my Brothers be!”

  Again Adam paused, pondering. “If you will confess, I may be able to keep St. Ruan’s out of the tribunal’s consideration.”

  “I do not bargain with lies,” Alf said. “Nor would you be wise to threaten more than my mere self. Remember that your Order is a new one, not yet as powerful as it would wish to be, and St. Ruan’s is very large, very wealthy, and very, very old. Would you dare to set yourself against so great a power?”

  “Would you dare to call upon it?”

  The chill left Alf’s voice to lodge in his bones. “I am the least of its children. I will not beset it with this shame.”

  “No shame to it if you are innocent.”

  “So am I condemned. I protest my innocence—I am commanded to confess. I speak of shame—it must be guilt, and not a foul and envious lie. Wherever I turn, whatever I say, I cannot be exonerated. My very face is held as evidence against me.”

  “So it is,” Adam said. “So it must be until all the truth is known.”

  “The truth as you would have it.”

  “The truth of God.” Adam signed himself and his prisoner. “May He keep you, and loose your tongue at last.”

  For that, he gained only silence and the turning of Alf’s back.

  o0o

  Alf lay in the dark, luxuriating in his solitude, in quiet unbroken by that gentle deadly questioning. It would resume all too soon, to wear him down, to search out his weaknesses.

  In the end he would confess. But not easily and not soon.

  You may not be able to choose.

  Thea’s voice. He closed his mind against her.

  There was a long stillness. Outside, his guard snored softly.

  The bolt slid back. The snoring did not pause. Alf turned, for that was not Adam’s slow sandaled tread. This was silent save for the faint rustling of cloth. He could see no more than a dark shape, clad and cowled in black.

  “Thea!” he whispered fiercely. “Will you never learn—”

  Her hand covered his mouth. “Hush, little Brother. You wouldn’t talk to me the safest way, and I won’t be put off.”

  “If anyone comes and sees you—”

  “I’ll be invisible, inaudible, and intangible.” She knelt beside him. There was light enough from the guard’s cresset outside for their eyes to see, but her fingers explored his face. “You’re down to bare bone. But”—She examined the rest of his body, despite his resistance—“they haven’t harmed you yet. I suppose you regret that.”

  Her hands had ended on his shoulders. He wanted to shake them off, but he did not. Better there, he thought, than elsewhere.

  She laughed very softly. “Why, little Brother! Prison’s been good for you. It’s chipped off a layer or two of prudery.”

  “Is that all you came to see?”

  “No.” She released him and sat on her heels. “I’ve been eavesdropping. You haven't used power much, have you?”

  “Only with my questioner, and only a little.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. I don’t suppose you know what’s been happening.”

  “The King is looking far afield for me. Bishop Aylmer is waiting for the Hounds to betray themselves. Kilhwch’s messenger is coming.”

  “You’re better informed than I thought,” Thea said. “Did you know that you’re to be tried on St. Nicholas’ Eve?”

  Alf drew his breath in sharply. “Two days—but they were waiting for my confession!”

  “The Hounds were. Earl Hugo and his imbecile of a Bishop have been getting nervous. They want you safely tried and burned before the King gets back. Aylmer they’ll tell of the trial—far too late for him to gather any resistance. Then when Richard appears they can say that it was an ecclesiastical matter; that Aylmer was notified; and that the sentence was carried out promptly to prevent a public outcry against the terrible sorcerer. All in due and proper form. And you’ll be a heap of ashes, and he'll have lost what he loves most.”

  “No,” Alf said. “He doesn't love me. He loves my face. He lusts after my body.”

  “He loves you,” said Thea. “God knows why.”

  Alf clenched his fists. “You are doing your best to talk me out of this. You won’t succeed. I know what I’m doing; I’ve considered all the consequences. I won’t be shaken.”

  “You,” she said in a thin cold voice, “are the most selfish being I‘ve ever known.”

&n
bsp; “Why? Because I won’t walk out with you now and forget both my duties and my troubles, and let you seduce me as you’ve tried to do since first we met?”

  “Seduce you? You, you pallid, spineless, canting priest?”

  “You sound exactly like the King,” he said. “Do you fancy that you love me?”

  When he could see again, she was gone. He lay where she had felled him, his mind reeling.

  Women, he thought foggily, were frail vindictive creatures, given more to tears than to blows. But this one had a heavier hand then Coeur-de-Lion.

  Almost he called her back. He had meant to wound her; and yet, he had not.

  Better for both of them that they not meet again.

  He lay on his side, hand to his throbbing cheek, and tried to make his mind a void.

  21

  The Chapter House of St. Benedict’s was a wonder of the north: a ring of pale gold stone, its vault held up with many pillars, and on each pillar a carven angel. Between St. Gabriel and St. Michael, beneath a gilded arch, sat Bishop Foulques. Robed and mitered, with an acolyte warding his jeweled crozier, he seemed no living man but an image set upon a tomb. His long pale face had no more life or color than one molded in wax.

  On his right, beneath arches smaller and unadorned, sat figures cowled in black or grey, monks of St. Benedict and of St. Paul. On his left, somewhat apart, was Bishop Aylmer, dressed as he had come from Mass in the brown habit of a monk of St. Jerome. Set against the splendor of his brother Bishop’s garb, his simplicity was a rebuke.

  Jehan, beside him, felt even larger and more ungainly than usual, crowded into a narrow niche with no more than a finger’s breadth to spare on either side. He battled the urge to make himself as small as he might and sat erect and still, shoulders back, hands on his knees. Opposite him, the monks stared and whispered. They had not expected Bishop Aylmer to appear on an hour’s notice. Nor, Jehan suspected, had they thought to see himself.

  Reynaud was not among them. After that first swift glance, Jehan ignored them.

  A man in Pauline garb entered and knelt before Bishop Foulques, murmuring in his ear. The Bishop nodded once, imperially.

  There was a pause, then a stir at the door, echoed round the hall. Jehan went rigid.

  Four monks of St. Paul paced into the hall, burly men with hard grim faces. In their midst walked their solitary charge.

  Jehan drew a shuddering breath. Brother Alf moved with the same light grace as always despite the chains that bound his hands; he bore no mark of violence. Yet he was alarmingly thin, his eyes black-shadowed, his skin so pale that it seemed translucent.

  His guards brought him to stand apart on the Bishop’s left, facing outward. If he saw Jehan, he did not show it. His gaze was strange, blurred, exalted, as if he walked in a trance.

  Bishop Foulques rose slowly. The acolyte placed the crozier in his hand; he settled it firmly and straightened his cope. “My brothers,” he intoned, “we are met in Christ’s name by the authority of Holy Church. The Lord be with you.”

  “And with your spirit,” the monks responded.

  “Oremus,” the Bishop bade them. “Let us pray.”

  Jehan barely heard the long ritual, prayer and psalm and prayer again, blessing and invocation and calling of Heaven to the labor of justice. His eyes and his mind fixed on the tall slight figure of the prisoner.

  The prayers ended; a monk came forward, he who had spoken to Bishop Foulques, with a parchment in his hand. He began to read from it in a voice both soft and clear.

  “We gather here, my most noble and august Lord Bishop, to seek your judgment. Before you stands one anointed with the sacred oil of the priesthood, consecrated upon the altar of God most high, yet accused of crimes most terrible and most unholy, forbidden by all the laws of God and man. By the testimony of many witnesses and by that of the prisoner himself, we have found due and proper cause to call him to this trial. Therefore, with God as our witness, we contend that this prisoner, known in this world as Alfred, once of St. Ruan’s upon Ynys Witrin and now of the following of His Majesty’s Lord Chancellor, is in fact a thing unholy and unclean, a changeling, a sorcerer, and a servant of the Lord of Hell; that he has knowingly and blasphemously profaned his sacred vows; and that he has cast a glamour upon His Majesty the King and upon His Majesty’s Chancellor, blinding them to his demonic origins and shaping them to his infernal ends.”

  Jehan ground his teeth. Aylmer’s hand had clamped about his wrist, else he would have risen. Perforce, he sat motionless and helpless, while the gentle voice wove its net of lies and half-truths.

  As the monk went on, Jehan’s wrath turned cold. In that grim clarity he became aware of a strangeness, a faint, maddening reverberation at the end of each pause.

  At first he did not trust his ears; yet with each brief silence he heard the echo more clearly. When at last the speaker ceased, there was no echo but a faint, distinct “Amen!”

  Brother Alf had heard the charges without expression. But his eyes had focused slowly; had flickered about as if he searched for something. Others too cast uneasy glances around the room; one of the monks crossed himself.

  Bishop Foulques seemed oblivious to the ghost-voice. “We have heard the charges,” he said. “We will now hear the witnesses.”

  Was that a ripple of eldritch laughter?

  The Pauline monk laid aside his parchment, genuflected to the Bishop, nodded to the man who guarded the door. He opened it to admit a young man at once arrogant and afraid. His eyes flicked at once to Alf and flinched away. He bowed low before Bishop Foulques, hesitated, bowed likewise to Aylmer.

  As he straightened, the monk smiled at him. “Ah, sieur, you come in good time.”

  He gestured; an acolyte brought a stool and set it in front of the Bishop. As the young man sat on it, the monk said, “You would be Sir Olivier de Romilly, would you not?”

  The knight nodded; again he smiled. “And I am Brother Adam of Ely. My lord Bishop you know; it is to him that you should speak, although it is I who will question you.”

  Sir Olivier smoothed a wrinkle in his scarlet hose. “And the rest?” he asked.

  “They will only listen,” said Brother Adam. “I will speak and my lord will judge.”

  The other nodded.

  Adam paused. After a moment he said, “Some days ago you told me a tale. Perhaps it would be best for my lord if you told it to him now, just as you told me.”

  Olivier obeyed. He would not look at Alf or at the silent Bishop; he spoke to the likeness of St. Michael with his flaming sword, in a high rapid voice as if reciting a lesson. “A fortnight and more ago, I was riding with the King against Earl Rahere and his rebels. We fought in the hills by Windermere; a hard fight as they all are, though we had the victory. I was one of those who paid for it. I met a man with an axe—a Viking he must have been, as they tell of in old tales, a great blond giant of a man. I broke my sword on his axe; he dragged me from my horse and hewed me down.

  “I was badly hurt. Very badly hurt, Brother, my lord. My yeomen carried me to the tent where the doctors were. There were strangers there. They were helping the doctors.”

  Olivier stopped. The listeners leaned forward, intent. Bishop Foulques frowned.

  “They were helping the doctors,” Olivier repeated. “I didn't think much of it. One doesn’t when one’s had an axe in the shoulder.

  “One of them came to me. He gave me water. I was very glad of that. Then he...he touched me.”

  “Yes?” murmured Adam as the pause stretched beyond endurance.

  “He touched me. I remember, he was looking at me—not at my face but at my shoulder. I thought he must have been a clerk, but he was dressed like a squire. Then I thought it was strange that I could think at all. And then...then I knew.” Olivier shivered. “I didn’t feel any pain. None. Only a sort of warmth, like a patch of sun.”

  “And your wound?”

  Olivier touched his shoulder and flexed it. “I was all over blood. But there was
nothing there.”

  “No scar?”

  “Brother, you know full well—” He stopped, composed himself. “There was a scar. My lord. But no wound. That, I’ve sworn to, on holy relics.”

  “May my lord see?”

  Jehan had felt the blood drain from his face as the young knight told his tale. When he bared his shoulder and the deep livid scar there, the novice swallowed bile.

  He had not known of that healing; Brother Alf had never spoken of it. Which was most damnably like him. Had he been trying even then to get himself killed?

  He seemed unmoved, although the eyes that turned to him held now a kind of horror.

  “Prisoner,” Bishop Foulques said, no name, no title. “Have you aught to say?”

  Alf drew a breath to speak. In the silence, a thin eerie voice chanted: “Kyrie eleison!”

  His lips tightened. "No,” he said. “No, my lord. I have nothing to say.”

  Adam turned to him. “No, Brother? Is it true then as Messire has said? Did you work your sorceries upon him?”

  “‘And He healed them,’ ”sang that voice without breath or body: “‘and the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.’ ”

  Alf threw up his head like a startled deer.

  Laughter rippled through the hall. Bishop Foulques half-rose; Olivier drew his dagger and spun about, hunting wildly for the enemy.

  Brother Adam alone seemed unperturbed. “The air is full of sorcery,” he said. He sketched a blessing over Olivier’s head. “Go, and have no fear. No evil can touch you.”

  Olivier withdrew, white and shaking, his dagger still in his hand. One by one the monks settled back into their seats. The Bishop sat once more; his acolyte straightened his cope and crowned him again with the miter that had fallen from his head.

  Brother Adam considered them all, so quietly certain of his victory that Jehan wanted to strike him down. “You have heard, Brothers,” he said, “true and certain proof that we contend here with the work of the Enemy. For it is the way with demons that they make mock of what is holy. I would have you hear now of a night not long ago, when our prisoner revealed his nature for all to see.”