Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

“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.

“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?”