Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

The boy stood back from me and bowed. ‘Is it true, Master, that the northerners are preparing to leave?’

I sniffed impatiently, then dabbed at my nose. I opened my mouth to speak, but caught another gust of ‘ Deus uult!’ from the great hall.

‘What’s that mark on your face?’ I said eventually.

Wilfred stepped out of the pool of lamplight, and put up a hand to cover the bruise.

I heard a noise overhead, and looked up to see Joseph’s little Syrian feet on the upper rungs of the ladder. I thought of the increasingly imperious itching in my bladder. I set it aside. Given this opportunity, it could wait for the moment. I took the boy by his arm. I led him along the corridor to a point just outside my cell where there was a little recess in the wall with a wooden bench set into it. I sat down and carefully stretched my legs. Over on my left, I could hear people grunting and scraping away beyond the side gate. The table now jammed tight between it and the wall was as good as any bars. No one would get through that – not, at least, without a fire, and that wouldn’t do much with all the rain that had been soaking into the wood. I pressed my hands into my armpits and waited for another of my shivering attacks to pass. Wilfred was wearing the new outer robe I’d demanded for him. Even so, his face looked pinched. If the light had been better, I might have seen the bluish tinge that had begun to frighten me. I wondered if the brazier in my cell had been refilled. I thought of going in to see. But the fit was passing, and moving was too much trouble.

‘I did fall this time, Master,’ Wilfred said defensively. ‘It was the stairs into the pantry. I was fetching scraps to feed the people from the village, and…’ He trailed off.

There was no point trying to corner him. It was obvious what had happened. But no one likes a grass, and Wilfred wouldn’t turn grass on the other boys. Bede usually looked after him. But Bede was off with the King; we’d needed one of the boys to show off his Latin, and Bede was easily the best candidate. Not for the first time in these few days, I wished I’d also recommended Wilfred.

‘How old are you?’ I asked with a slight change of subject.

‘I shall be fourteen in March,’ he said.

I sniffed. Of course, he was telling the truth now. But no one could have guessed it. The boy’s height didn’t say more than ten, and he might have disappeared altogether by turning sideways.

‘But, Master,’ he said again, ‘surely we shall not all soon be dead. Is it true the northerners will be gone by morning?’

‘Could be,’ I said, trying to sound non-committal. Then I leaned close to him and dropped my voice lower still. It came out somewhere between a whisper and a croak. ‘Listen,’ I said, now urgent, ‘do you remember the gap behind the bread oven – the crack in the outer wall made by the heat? It can’t be seen from the outside because of all the brambles. Well, I want you to gather yourself a bag of food and water from the kitchen and be prepared to get out through that gap.’ I took hold of his arm and shook him as he began his protests. He trailed off into another of his coughing fits. A drop of opium in wine would fix that. Sadly, opium is just another of the civilised luxuries that can’t be had in England. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I know you can squeeze through. There’s no point my even trying. All else aside, I still have the chest and shoulders of a big man. If anything happens, I want you straight out. Get out and run. Don’t look back. Don’t fall in with anyone else who may know about the gap. Get out, run, and don’t stop running until you hear men talking English.’

‘And you, Master?’ he asked, trying not to cry.

I tried for a laugh, but felt it turning to a cough. ‘At my advanced age, dear boy,’ I said, ‘I can’t say death is such a loss as it might seem to you. I already stand far over its threshold. There isn’t much the northerners can do that would make it more inconvenient than if I just stopped breathing one night in my sleep. Now, I want you to promise that you won’t stick around if any of the gates are forced. And I want you to promise that you will help write the Universal History that I’ve been promising the world these past fifty years, and still haven’t delivered.’

I sat back and gritted my teeth as the chill of the wall went straight through my bones. ‘Listen,’ I said, fighting for control, ‘I don’t know more than anyone else about what tomorrow will bring. But it never does any harm to prepare for the worst.’ I got up. ‘Now, you get yourself off to the kitchens. Get something proper to eat, and sit as long as you can in the warm. If anyone challenges you, just say that Brother Aelric sent you.’ Wilfred stood before me in silence. I waved him about whatever duties had made him cross my path. I’d said what I’d wanted. There was no more to discuss. I listened as his racking cough vanished into the maze of corridors that spread out behind the great hall. Expecting him to run more than a hundred yards without falling down was optimistic. But I’d now done all that I could given the limits imposed.

I looked angrily at the fifteen feet between me and the closed door of my cell. Now I was up, my bladder was letting off trumpet blasts of urgency. I could already feel a warm dribble on my left shin.

It is much later. It may be around the midnight hour. It may be later still. With the disruption of regular observances, there are no bells or chanting to let me know the time of night. It may be a waste of my dwindling papyrus to sit here writing up new events. But I’m sure you will pardon me, dear Reader, if I dwell on the siege. So far, pestilence and the cold have been the main perceived dangers in Jarrow. Barbarian raids are not a common occurrence.

And there is yet more of the here and now to write up before I can settle back down to my narrative of the past. I got to my cell and had a piss. I sat awhile, warming myself and brooding over another cup of the beverage that inebriates and only sometimes cheers. I did then write the whole of the above. When I’d finished, I sat up and wiped the ink from the end of my nose. I looked at my pens. The steady scraping across cheap papyrus had blunted all the reeds. It was now I noticed that my knife was missing.

Fucking nuisance! I thought. For old times’ sake, I had the usual suspicious attack, and began looking through my stuff. There are no locks on the cell doors. But since I’d been with Joseph – or been aware of his movements – all day, there was no cause for suspicion. He’d not been snooping through my cell. No one else can read the sort of Greek in which I normally write. No, someone had most likely been in to sharpen my pens and then simply gone off with the knife. Just to be sure, I had another look in all the likely places, then got up to see if anyone else might be awake and have a bladed instrument to hand.

I was about to lift the catch on the door to my cell when I heard voices in the corridor outside. It was Cuthbert, whose cell was next door but one to mine. For once, I was glad to hear his voice. He’d surely have a penknife. All I had to do was paint on a toothless grin and overlook our little differences of earlier in the day.

But he was in a hurry. By the time I’d got the door open, he was already disappearing round the corner towards the front of the monastery.

‘I feel the hand of God on my shoulder,’ he was saying to someone else – as if any Supreme Being might give a toss about the doings of some broken-down teacher of logic out here in the middle of nowhere. ‘My work is plainly not yet done.’

Knowing Cuthbert, his work would be some while in the doing. I wasn’t standing out here in the freezing cold on the chance he’d cut it short. There was a candle guttering away in his cell. So I shuffled down the corridor and pulled his door shut behind me.