Isle of Glass
Page 26
He seemed strange, lying so still, who had been lively and restless even in sleep; the robes of a Lord Abbot had displaced his old brown habit. But his face bore a hint of his wicked smile.
Almost Alf could hear his dry humorous voice. “All this fuss for a silly old fool. I should sit up and grin, and give them all a proper fright.”
Alf smiled and touched the cold hand. Something glittered beneath it upon his breast. Alf’s fingers found the shape of a cross, the cool smoothness of silver, and a memory of Thea’s presence.
“To you, O Lord, I cried out; with the Lord I pleaded:
‘What gain would there he from my life-blood, from my going down into the grave?’ ”
The chanting rolled over them both, living and dead. From where Alf stood, he could see the shadow that was the doorway of the Lady Chapel, a faint glimmer as of painted stars.
The lamp there was extinguished, the chapel forbidden until it should be cleansed of the stain of murder. Bishop Aylmer would do that tomorrow after the funeral Mass.
“You changed my mourning into dancing:
You took off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,
That my soul might sing praise to You without ceasing;
O Lord, my God, forever will I give You thanks.”
Alf knelt beside the bier and bowed his head over his folded hands.
o0o
“Brother? Brother Alfred?”
The chapel had been silent for a long while. Alf straightened slowly, stiffly. Several monks stood near him, watching him: Brother Osric, Brother Owein, and old Brother Herbal.
Looking into their faces, he realized that they had always thought well of him. The younger ones had been his pupils; Brother Herbal had taken vows a year or two before he had. Familiar, all of them, and yes, beloved.
Brother Osric cleared his throat. A bright lad, he had been; aging now, his eyes, never good, peering myopically through the dimness. “Brother,” he said again. “We’ve met in Chapter, all of us, to elect our new Abbot. Some of us wanted you to be there. But...well...you were sent out and you came back a layman, and there’s the matter of—of—”
Osric had always lost all fluency when he was agitated. Alf finished the sentence for him. “Murder,” he said. “I know, Brother. I understand. And I appreciate your coming here to tell me.” He looked from face to face. “Whom shall I congratulate?”
They would not answer. Yet they had chosen someone; that much Alf could read, even without witchery. Someone important, and someone controversial, from the gleam in Brother Owein’s eye and the set of Brother Osric’s jaw.
Brother Herbal frowned. Like Morwin, he had never had much patience. “Well, Brothers? Isn’t anybody going to tell him?”
Alf stood. His knees ached; his back was twinging. He had lost the knack of kneeling for long hours on hard stones. “What’s the trouble? It can’t be anyone I'd object to very strenuously; I’m not such a fool that I’d demand another Morwin.”
“Good,” said Brother Herbal. “Because Morwin, you’re not.”
“What do I have to do with—” Alf broke off. He knew. God help him, he knew.
He wanted to burst into wild laughter. Four times now. Would they never learn? And five choices, it made. Five. He would go mad.
“Now look here,” Brother Owein said sternly, as if he had been a stubborn novice. “This is becoming a ritual. Elect Brother Alfred; argue with him; lose the argument; and go through the whole foolish process again to elect someone less able but more willing. I know Dom Morwin wanted you to be Abbot after him—and so did Dom Andreas, Dom Willibrord, and probably Dom Lanfranc, too. Haven't you got the message by now?”
Alf sank down upon the altar steps, so pale that Brother Herbal hastened to him. He waved the old man away. “I'm not going to faint. I’m not going to shout at you, or howl, or even weep. I'm not even going to remind you that I’m still recovering from trial for witchcraft, or that I killed a man on sacred ground.” He held out his hands to them. “Brothers, you honor me more than I can say. To gather, all of you, and to elect me your Abbot, even knowing what I am and what I've done... I think I shall weep, after all.”
Brother Herbal grimaced. “Go ahead. But tell us first. Yes or no?”
Alf looked at each in turn. “You know that I have a charge from Morwin to seek absolution in Jerusalem.”
“We know,” Osric answered. “If you go now, you go as Abbot, and some of us will go with you. By your leave, of course.”
He wanted to laugh again, for pain. “Oh, Brothers! Do you know what torment this is? I stand upon a peak in the desert with all of heaven and earth spread about me, and voices whispering in my ear, bidding me look and choose. A warrior priest in the Bishop’s train, a lord of Anglia, an elven knight of Rhiyana—and now, Abbot of St. Ruan’s. Dear God! What shall I do?”
Brother Owein stood over him, hands on hips. “All of a sudden your worth is catching up with you. I don't doubt you’d make a good knight or lord or priest; you’d certainly make a better Abbot than most.” He glanced at his companions. “We had orders to make you accept, by force if necessary. But we didn’t know how many others had been at you. The abbey can manage as it is for a day or two. Take the time. Meditate. Pray. Say the Mass and ask for guidance. Then tell us. Yes, or—God forbid—no.”
They left him then, with many glances over their shoulders. The last, as they passed the door, found him on his face before the altar.
His shoulders shook. Weeping, they wondered, or laughter?
33
Reverently, lovingly, Alf lifted the vestments from the press where he had laid them away, so long ago. They bore a sweet red-brown scent, for the press was of cedar of Lebanon. Amice and alb, white linen of his own weaving; the cincture from his first habit, soft with age; maniple and stole: and the chasuble of black Chin silk, embroidered with silver thread, heavy with pearls.
He laid out each garment as an acolyte would have done, but the novices who would serve him, and the Bishop and the priests of St. Ruan’s who would concelebrate the Mass, had busied themselves elsewhere in the sacristy, leaving him alone with his priesthood and his God.
He found that his hands were shaking, nor could he stop them; his heart pounded. To say the Mass, and this Mass of all others, with such burdens as weighted his mind and his heart, and perhaps also his soul, if soul he had...
He leaned against the wall, breathing deep again and again. Dear God, he thought. Morwin, make me strong. It’s been so long, so long; and I am not worthy. I am—not—
Jehan’s concern pierced through his barriers. He forced himself to straighten, to take up the amice. His hands, his mind, remembered. He touched the garment to his head and laid it about his shoulders, murmuring a prayer.
He reached for the alb. Jehan held it out to him. For a moment their hands touched. Alf smiled. “My bulwark,” he said. “Thank you, Jehan.”
The novice bowed, smiling back; Alf drew the white robe over his head. There was comfort in this ritual of robing, each movement prescribed, each thought foreordained. For so long he had only served and watched; he had forgotten the quiet joy at the center of the rite.
One of the novices peered round the door. “Almost time,” he said.
They were all without, the monks, the kings and their men, even Thea, schismatic Greek that she was. Her mind brushed Alf’s for an instant, bright and strong.
The procession had taken shape while he paused. He moved into his place, walking slowly beneath the weight of his vestments.
As he passed Aylmer, the Bishop touched his arm. “Remember,” he whispered. “‘Thou art a priest forever, in the order of Melchisedec.’ ”
Forever.
He lifted his chin. The chant had begun, slow and deep. “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine...: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them....”
Morwin lay before the altar dais as for three days he had lain with Alf as his constant companion. The processi
on moved slowly past him, Alf last of all, and divided, each man or boy taking his place as the ritual commanded.
Alf bowed low to the Abbot on his bier and lower still to the altar. In the silence after the antiphon, his voice was soft and pure. “I will go up to the altar of God.”
“To God who gives joy to my youth,” the acolytes responded. He gathered all of his courage, and went up.
o0o
Richard watched him as he had watched on that first day in the camp by the lake. Then Alf had been only an acolyte; now he was the priest, Abbot-elect of St. Ruan’s. Yet he looked the same, too fair to be human, rapt in the exaltation of the Mass.
As the rite continued, it seemed to the King that all light gathered about the slender figure on the altar. The priests around him, the novices moving about their duties, the chanting monks, faded to shadows. When he raised the Host, it blazed like a sun; his splendid voice rang forth: “Hoc est enim corpus meum: For this is my body.”
Richard covered his eyes with his hands. Mass had always been a duty, and a dull one at that. But this was different. God, the God he had ignored or given only lip service, had entered into this place and shone through the priest, the sorcerer, the manslayer, soulless and deathless.
He is a priest, the King thought, too certain of it even to despair. Aylmer will have him. Aylmer or the abbey. What a fool I was to think that I could ever make a lord of him!
Looking up, he found Gwydion’s grey eyes upon him. The Elvenking shook his head very slightly. Wait, his gaze said. He has not chosen yet. Wait and see.
o0o
At the height of his exaltation, Alf looked again upon the Light to which Morwin had gone; approached it and almost touched it.
In that moment he felt again Morwin’s presence, like a warm hand in his, a quick smile, a murmured word. Well done, Alf. Oh, well done!
The young face within the Light, the old one upon the bier, merged and became one. His voice lifted. “‘May angels lead you to Paradise; at your coming, may the martyrs receive you, and lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, who was once a beggar, may you find eternal rest.’ ”
Strong monks took the bier upon their shoulders and paced forward. In a cloud of chanting and of incense they bore it through the chapel, down a long stair into the musty dark of the crypt. There they laid it down, the chanting muted now, the incense dimming the flicker of candles. With gentle hands they raised the Abbot’s body and set it in a niche, among the bones and the rotting splendor of the abbots who had gone before him.
The chanting faded and died. Alf bent and marked the cold brow with the sign of the Cross, and kissed it gently. “Sleep well,” he whispered.
He turned. The lights and the candles departed one by one, leaving Morwin to his long sleep.
o0o
Alf took off his vestments as reverently as he had put them on. No one spoke to him, not even Jehan who served him, for the light lingered still in his face. When at last he stood in his brown habit, Jehan glanced aside, intent upon his duties; Alf slipped away.
o0o
The Thom of Ynys Witrin slept its sleep which was like death, its boughs heavy with snow as with blossoms in spring. Alf stood beneath it, brown as it was, crowned with white.
He laid his hand on the gnarled trunk. The power glimmered in it as in the stone of Bowland, rising drowsily to touch his own—a warmth, a green silence.
It no longer wished him ill, if indeed it ever had. “Choices,” Alf said to it. “So many choices. ‘A priest forever.’ I am; yet I’m so many other things besides. What shall I do? Shall I be the Lord Abbot? Can you endure that? Shall I be rather a soldier of God? An elven knight, or a prince of Anglia? What shall I be? What can I be?”
The wind whispered in the branches, yet without words. The grey sky bent over him. High above him a hawk wheeled, crying.
He turned his face to it. It was no common hawk, merlin or kestrel, but a splendid bird, the hawk of princes, the peregrine. Even as he watched, it turned on its great wings and sped away eastward.
His breath caught. An answer, after all, and so simple. “I forgot,” he said. “Dear God, forgive me for being a fool. I forgot, that Abbot or priest or knight, I remain myself. Alfred. Alf. Not Sir or Lord or Father or Brother. Only Alf. Myself.”
Himself—with all the world before him and choices without number, and freedom at last. Freedom to choose as he would.
A moment longer he hesitated. He was afraid. To choose, who had never chosen—what if he chose ill? What if he did not choose at all?
o0o
All of St. Ruan’s gathered in the hall for the Abbot’s funeral feast. Even Brother Kyriell had left his post at the gate, freed for once from his duties.
But a lone figure stood under the arch, wrapped in a cloak, waiting.
Alf regarded her without surprise, as she regarded him. “You've chosen,” she said.
He nodded.
She looked him over from cowled head to sandaled foot. “You’re going away.”
“To Jerusalem.”
“Alone?”
He nodded again. “Morwin thought I'd find peace there. Or at least that the journey would show me how to accept myself for what I am.”
“And the kings? The Bishop? The monks?”
“They all want me to be a great lord. But how can I be great or high or lordly, if I don't even know myself? I’ll be Alfred now, and only Alfred. I think they’ll understand.”
“They’ll try,” she said.
There was a silence. Alf stared at his feet. "Tell Jehan. The books in my cell are for him. With my love. The ring with the moonstone in it and the gold bezant, I'm keeping; but all the rest of his gifts my lord Richard can dispose of as he wills. Aylmer must have my vestments that I wore in the Mass. And Gwydion...tell him to look in the coffer in the Abbot’s study. The altar cloth there is my gift to him. And Fara—Fara he must have again. Tell him.”
“I’ll tell everybody.”
“The Brothers will have to elect someone else. I hope they choose Owein. He’d make good Abbot, better than I.”
She said nothing.
“And for you,” he said. “For you I have this.” He took her face in his hands. Lightly, awkwardly, he kissed her.
He drew back. Her eyes were wide, all gold; he could not meet them. “Good-bye,” he said. “God be with you.”
Still she did not speak.
He shot the bolts and pushed open the postern. A thin cold wind danced about him, blowing from the east. He turned his face to it and his back to the abbey, and left the gate behind.
o0o
Thea stood for a long moment as he had left her. He did not look back with eyes or mind.
Where a woman had stood lay a crumpled dark cloak. A white hound ran down the long road.
Her four feet were swifter than his two, and lighter upon the snow. She drew level with him, leaped ahead of him, bounded about him.
He stopped. “Thea,” he said. His voice was stern, cold.
Jehan was a fool, she said in her mind. He asked if he could come. I’m not asking. She trotted ahead a yard or two and paused, looking bright-eyed over her shoulder. Well, little Brother? Are you coming?
He drew breath as if to speak. All that he might have done or said raced through his mind.
Thea watched it all with dancing eyes. Did he think that any man, even an elf-priest, could gainsay her?
Suddenly he laughed. “Not even a saint,” he said.
She ran before him, and he followed her, striding to Jerusalem.
About the Author
Judith Tarr holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for The Isle of Glass and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
Other Books by Judith Tarr
The Hou
nd and the Falcon
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn (June 5, 2012)
The Hounds of God (July 3, 2012)
Ars Magica
Alamut
The Dagger and the Cross
Lord of the Two Lands
Writing Horses
A Wind in Cairo
Copyright & Credits
The Isle of Glass
Volume I
The Hound and the Falcon
Judith Tarr
Book View Café eBook Edition: May 1, 2012
Copyright © 1985, 2012 Judith Tarr
ISBN: 978-1-61138-167-2
First published: Bluejay, 1985
Cover design by Dave Smeds
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