This building was longer and deeper than the cells. It served as a preparation house for the dead, before they were laid in their graves in the cemetery. Only a wooden table stood in its center. Little else marked it save some clean linen for wrapping the body and some dried flowers and herbs. The building was not often in use. The poor folk could not afford the fee for a service, so only the nobles and wealthy merchants made use of it.
In our world, most nobles and merchants, indeed most high-ranking clergy, were the sons and grandsons of men who had prospered under the Romans and held civil or church office, as decurions or presbyters. In truth, even Patrick’s father was said to have been a decurion. But Patrick’s case was a little different; his kidnapping as a boy stole him away from the luxuries his father’s station could provide.
A monachus, a boy really, stood in the doorway. He was of the nervous sort, constantly wringing his hands, his eyes flitting about. “Abbot, I have watched carefully. No one has passed.”
Coroticus patted the boy on his arm. “Be at peace, son.”
Lying on the table was the naked body of an ancient man, his bones poking through his age-bleached, wrinkled skin. I had known Elafius well during my days at the abbey. We were not particular friends, but I respected his knowledge of herbs and their uses. He had charge of the herbarium and often visited me with extracts of willow bark and other medicines.
Inspecting his body, I saw no real marks, though there was little light in the cell. Where his body touched the table was dark, very dark. I had seen it before and guessed it to be the settling of his blood after he breathed his last.
“Why am I here, Coroticus?” I asked. Nothing obvious sang of foul play. He was just an old man whose time had come.
The abbot pulled his robe from about his neck nervously. “When he retired last night to his cell, Malgwyn, he was fine. He showed no sign of distress, save aggravation with the new abbess.”
“I did not know that she had been around long enough to cause aggravation.”
Coroticus waved a hand in dismissal. “It was nothing to cause concern.”
“I still see naught to cause you to send for me.”
“His cell, abbot.” The young boy found his voice.
“What of his cell?” I asked.
“You should see it before you judge my reasons for summoning you.”
“Why did you not take me there first? This was a waste of time!” My fury was more the result of the long trip in the mud than anger with Coroticus.
“No, I wanted you to see first that he had no marks of violence. Then you will understand better what you see in his cell.” Despite my glare and that of Arthur’s, Coroticus was firm.
Arthur turned to the young monachus. “See that our horses are stabled. In a few hours, Illtud will be arriving with a larger escort for me. Arrange for them to be fed.”
“Now,” I said, turning to Coroticus, “take us to Elafius’s cell.”
Saxon raiders. That is who seemed to have swooped down upon Elafius’s cell. Though the monachi were forbidden to have personal possessions, the old man’s hut was cluttered with manuscripts and herbs, tossed about carelessly. A chair was knocked over, lying across the bedding. It looked as if the room had been searched, perhaps. “Where was Elafius found?”
Coroticus pointed to a place on the hard-packed earthen floor. “Here, slumped on the floor. He looked as if he had collapsed.”
“I wish you had not removed him before I arrived.”
“He had to be prepared for burial, Malgwyn.”
“But you have not yet prepared him, merely stripped him of his robes and laid him out on a table.”
“It is a beginning. You arrived sooner than I thought.”
“And you want me to study his death and find if there were some evil in it, yet you deny me those things I need? Never mind.” I turned to Arthur. “My lord, I suggest that you go and take your meal with the abbot. I shall stay here. Later, when Elafius’s cell has told me all it can, I will join you.”
At that, they left me to my chores. I eyed the cell once more. It was as if a whirlwind from the gods had struck. The simple table and chair allowed in each cell were both turned over. Some small vials lay broken and scattered on the floor, their contents staining the earthen floor black. The furs of his bedding were shoved into one corner.
I stood where Coroticus indicated they had found Elafius. Slowly, carefully, I turned in a circle, my arm extended outward. The cell was small, but not so small that I could reach across from wall to wall.
If a man became seized of some illness suddenly, how would he act? It was a question of some interest. Would he flail about? Would he simply fall quickly and quietly to the ground? Would he collapse in some kind of spiraling heap? And if he did, could he have created the kind of destruction I found there? I did not see how. To create the havoc I saw, he would have to have suffered some horrible pain, thrashing about helplessly, not stricken suddenly unconscious and falling in a heap.
The documents lay spread across the cell, in no identifiable pattern, I thought. Then I noticed something odd. The documents all lay face up, with none covering another, at least not much. The writing was visible on each. That such a circumstance could happen by accident seemed unlikely.
I righted a stool and sat on it, studying carefully the carnage before me. But was it carnage? Something about the scene disturbed me.
Carefully, I got to my knees and studied the documents. They made little sense to me, writings on metallurgy and other technical subjects. Many were the subjects covered by the documents copied by the brothers. While most were religious, some touched on other matters, plants, herbs, cooking, farming. I had, myself, copied a treatise on the stars by a woman named Hypatia of Alexandria. Coroticus had me do it because the work was considered blasphemy by the bishop, and he wanted none of the monachi to know that he possessed a copy. He said that Hypatia was a learned woman of Alexandria, but also a pagan beauty that bewitched men and made them worship her. Christians had stoned her to death and torn the limbs from her body. Coroticus spoke of Christian charity, removing her from the miserable existence that was her fate, but I always thought this incident an odd form of charity.
What puzzled me most was that the sheets were all faced up, as if someone had been reading them. Studying the scene, I noticed that Elafius’s bedding, his furs, were crammed into a corner, as if purposely jammed there, not accidentally tossed there by the thrashing of a dying man.
I realized then that someone had searched the dead man’s cell. But I saw no method of telling if it happened before Elafius died or after. Logic told me afterward, but did the same man who searched the cell kill Elafius as well? Or, perhaps, Elafius caught the intruder searching and paid with his life. I could not make that judgment. Indeed, it could have been Coroticus himself who had searched, looking for some reason for the old man’s death.
But then I saw an empty vial partially hidden beneath one of the parchments.
CHAPTER THREE
I snatched the vial up. Empty but for a few drops of a dark liquid, it was of the small sort, suited for holding extracts of herbs or leaves. My eyes roved the hard-packed dirt floor, but I saw nothing that could have been stored in the vial. But then, under the edge of a parchment leaf, I saw a partially smashed red berry. And not just any berry. A yew berry, from those trees we used to make our hunting bows. A few yew needles were also sprinkled across the floor. I sniffed the residue in the vial.
Quickly, I searched the floor, but other than two or three more berries, there were no other signs. I did not like this, not at all. My mind was suddenly fogged by a mass of thoughts, like to that of snowflakes riding the wind. Yew berries, at least the seed, are poisonous to man and beast as are the needles. Indeed, many horses and cattle fell to them. An extract of yew berries and needles was equally deadly. And the poison strikes quickly, fatally. No one knew what it did to a man. No one had survived a dose of them. Some said the extract of the seeds and needl
es had other uses, but of that I knew little.
But poison was a woman’s weapon, or so it was believed, and this was a community of men. And, besides, Elafius was a doddering old man, unlikely to have fallen afoul of a woman.
My heart was racing and the snowflakes of thoughts pounded my skull in a blizzard. Did Coroticus know of the yew? Is that why he called for me? Yet Elafius worked in the herbarium. It would be normal for him to have them, perhaps. Or would it? Who had searched the cell? For I was certain that was how it happened. I began to realize that regardless of what Coroticus knew or did not know, his actions in summoning me were at least grounded in reason. And many, many questions were yet to be asked.
I rose and backed into the corner where Elafius’s furs were bunched to study the cell from yet another angle. As my feet shoved the furs yet farther into the corner, I caught a glint of something shiny and silver. In amazement, I bent over and plucked a silver denarius of Valentinian from the ground. This was the most amazing find of all. Monachi were forbidden to possess coins. And I had never seen a coin of Valentinian quite like this one. It was inscribed “I promise to serve five years” in Latin. An odd inscription for a coin, I thought. Why did Elafius have this coin? Or had his murderer dropped it?
And it was bright, shiny. Not worn at all. Sometimes we saw such coins in the far west of our lands, when merchants brought them in, but they were few, very few.
Too many questions. My stomach growled. I was hungry, but I knew that I had to see Elafius once more before he was buried. Besides, knowing Arthur and Coroticus, they were arguing over some obscure element of the church.
I sent one of the young monachi to watch over Elafius’s cell and headed back to the building for the preparation of bodies. As I crossed the muddy ground, I noticed a very young, very round monachus, obviously new to his service as his scalp gleamed whitely where his tonsure had been newly cut. Above pink, cherubic cheeks, his eyes followed me hawkishly, brazenly, and I wondered who this fresh face could be.
“Ider!” I spotted the young monachus hurrying on some chore. He stopped and ran to my side.
“Yes, Malgwyn?”
I almost chuckled at his eagerness to please. “Who is that monachus there?”
Ider’s face screwed up into a frown. “That is Gildas. He is newly come to Ynys-witrin. Coroticus owed some debt to his father and took the boy in.”
So, this was Lord Celyn’s brother. “Why does he look as though he swallowed sour wine?”
“He has not learned the lesson of humility. Indeed”—and Ider shook his head sorrowfully—“I doubt that he shall ever learn it.”
I nodded in agreement. A lack of humility seemed to be a family trait. “Come with me. I must examine Elafius’s body once more.”
With Arthur and Bedevere busy elsewhere, Ider was visibly more relaxed. “Of course, Malgwyn. I would be honored.”
And so he fell into step with me as we trudged across the muddy ground. Ider had come to Ynys-witrin only in my last months there. He had been such a fresh-faced youngster, so devout and eager to learn the ways of the monachi. I often wondered what drove these boys to so imprison themselves at such a young age. They had hardly sampled the world, and yet they entered into a life of deprivation without giving themselves the chance to explore that world. I knew that many of them were second sons, unlikely to inherit more than their father’s reputation. So, service to the Christ was a respectable calling.
“What think you of Elafius’s death, Malgwyn?” Ider shook me from my musings.
I paused before answering, sidestepping a heap of horse dung but landing my foot in a puddle the span of a hand deep. The splatter of water attacked Ider’s robe.
“I think little of it at present,” I finally answered, shaking the muddy water from my caligae. “Tell me of Lord Lauhiir. How long has he been here?”
“Just a fortnight. He sent some of his men and workmen to improve the Tor for his arrival. They eat much meat there, Malgwyn.” Ider shook his head, and I laughed a little. We all ate meat, but not much. It was too rare a food, and the monachi kept their diet simple, mostly bread and vegetables. The amounts of meat that graced a lord’s table would have caused sour stomach in any monachus, except Coroticus, that is. His table held as much meat as any lord’s. But such were the differences between abbots and those who served them.
“If that is the worst of his sins, then he is truly blessed,” I answered as we came to the door of the hut. “Please, Ider, attend me a moment. I will not be long.”
The young, pale-faced monachus nodded eagerly. “I would learn from you, Malgwyn.”
“Learn what? Learn writing? You are a monachus; ’tis the brothers who will decide what work would suit you best.”
Ider’s face turned red. “No, Malgwyn. I would learn to solve puzzles as you do.”
“Then,” I said with a chuckle, “you yearn to spend your days in frustration.” With that, I entered the hut once more. Nothing else had been done with Elafius; he lay as we left him. This time, though, I knew what to look for.
“Light that candle,” I instructed Ider.
“But ’tis still light,” he complained.
He spoke truly, but what little light filtered through the unchinked walls of the old hut and in through the door were hardly sufficient to read a holy text. I needed to read the holiest text of all, a human body. “Just light it.”
Ider did as he was instructed, and quickly the small cell was filled with a yellow, hazy glow of light.
Once again, I faced the wrinkled white skin, shrunken now; he looked older and but a pale shade of himself. This time there were no shadows to hold secrets. His back from head to foot was dark though. I had seen such in dead bodies on battle-fields before. I knew not its cause, but I knew it happened at some time after death.
I looked first at the place where his jaw connected with his skull. The finger impressions were obvious, on both sides. “Bring the flame closer,” I directed. Just as I thought, a palm print could also clearly be seen on his forehead. In the dead, I had seen that bruises, marks, were more vivid than in the living.
Waving Ider back, I stared at the cold body and thought for a long while, matching images from his cell with the marks on his body. Books strewn about, as if someone searched there. A silver denarius where it should not have been. The marks on Elafius’s body. The yew needles on the floor of the cell.
Suddenly I jerked from my reverie, almost knocking Ider back into a wall. I grabbed the dagger from my waist and saw that its edge was not as sharp as I needed. I turned to Ider. “Bring me a knife.”
His eyes widened like those of a frightened young deer. “A knife?”
“Ider! We cannot help Elafius now. But by desecrating his body, we may make some sense of his death.”
Still he hesitated.
“The blame will be mine. Now, fetch me a sharp knife from the abbot’s kitchen.”
The young monachus scampered away as I continued to ponder. Someone strong had held the monachus, forced his mouth open and poured yew extract down his throat. But for that to have killed him, he would have had to swallow a goodly quantity. I knew enough of battle wounds to have seen men’s stomachs split open and their last meal come spilling out. Now, I would do it to find the cause of a man’s death, not to kill him myself.
“What is this nonsense?” I turned to find Coroticus standing imperiously in the doorway, with Arthur looking amused behind him. “You will not cut this poor man’s body open! It is being prepared for burial. I will not have you desecrate it further.”
I laughed at him and scratched my half-arm. “If I do not, good abbot, then you will never know what happened to Elafius.”
“I already know what happened to Elafius,” came a strangely familiar voice. I looked beyond Arthur and saw the chubby young monachus Gildas, his freshly shaven tonsure shining in what little sun God provided on this miserable day.
Turning, I looked at him. His face wore a smile born of thinking himself
too smart. “And how did he die?”
Gildas stepped forward. “He was killed by the woman
Rhiannon, from Gaul. I heard them argue about the divine sacrifice. Obviously, she killed him. She is a stout woman, unlike poor, ancient Elafius.”
“And how did she accomplish this feat?”
He shrugged. “She strangled him, I should think.”
I turned to Arthur with a look he knew too well. Turning to Coroticus, he ignored Gildas and entered the fray for the first time. “Give him the knife. I will place my faith in Malgwyn, not this child.”
Coroticus wanted to argue. I could tell by how his lips stretched into a thin line. But he trusted me as well, and he dared not dispute Arthur. “Give him the knife,” he ordered Ider, who looked pained at being caught between such powers.
I took the knife, not as sure of myself as I once was, and approached the old man with some fear. For a man with my reputation, it was an odd feeling. But I reminded myself that the old fellow could feel nothing, and so I slit his belly, about where I reckoned his stomach was located.
I cut carefully, amazed that no blood spilled from the wounds. Fascinated with the things I found, the different creatures that inhabit our flesh, I saw the one I sought. With the greatest of care, I sliced it open and found the remnants of his last meal. Vegetable pieces mostly. And a few yew needles. Perhaps a small handful of a black liquid that I took to be yew extract. We all knew how yew needles rendered a man senseless. But there seemed hardly enough to do even that.
Motioning for Ider to rearrange the lamps, I checked the other organs, not knowing exactly what I was looking for. I worked my way up his torso, looking for anything, something, to account for his death. Reaching behind his ears, I cradled his head and immediately felt something amiss.
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