Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The abbot visibly trembled, though with a great effort he looked up again and smiled weakly. “Of course, Jasper. These things are yours. I’d never deny it. But I have them in safe keeping and not here in this chamber. You’ll have to give me leave to go and get them.”

  Vespasian laughed. “Not alone,” he said. “We will come with you.”

  Abbot Bernado climbed from his stool and stood small before us. He looked up at Vespasian, then glanced briefly towards me. I had trusted this man. I had trusted Thomas Cambio and had thought them to be the same occupying life force. Now all the warmth I had once thought so genuine had turned to animosity in his eyes and all my belief shrivelled. What I had read in his face had been quite false and maintained only by the mask of magic. Now the mask crumbled and turned to hatred. I had ruined his friendship with the man who had been his mentor and whose power could destroy him. I looked quickly away and kept close beside Vespasian.

  We followed the abbot into a small room leading off beyond the study and reached through a narrow opening behind the desk. Without window, it was heavy with dust and gloom. Another desk stood central. On this a massive bible was opened at the Gospel of St. John. The pages were beautifully illuminated and the first letter was scrolled in vibrant and glorious colours. ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.’ It was written in Latin which neither I nor Tilda understood, but I knew the words off by heart. I would have loved to turn the vellum pages and see more of its ancient beauty but the abbot was rummaging in the cupboard beneath. He reappeared, squinting, dust in his eyes and his tonsure capped in cobwebs. He cradled a small package, held in parchment and tied with gold thread, and he appeared to be breathless with the weight, either material or spiritual. As he looked up at Vespasian, his expression changed and I read regret. “It’s all here,” he said, words tapering off into shame. “I’m sorry Jasper. Truly I’m sorry. I never meant it to be this way.”

  “Instead of your desires empowering you, you allowed them power over you,” Vespasian said. “It is a common weakness. Now, tell me the truth.” As he relinquished the package the abbot breathed relief. Then the spite returned to his eyes and his mouth tightened.

  “Anything,” Bernado said. “Ask anything of me, dear friend.” As he spoke he brought his hands together, clasping them tightly across his chest, breathing deeply as if excited. I could see the sweat on his upper lip and his mouth moved fractionally as if he spoke some other word, lost in silence. Then, fingers still entwined, he stroked the ring he wore, engraved with the goat’s head. I felt Vespasian stiffen, while watching the other man closely.

  The room had been dark and stuffy. Then time coughed and blinked and missed its tide. I felt it. Something was happening and a black threat moved and came alive. The shade deepened and the gathering dust spiralled and scattered. I was standing as close to Vespasian as I could. I felt hot wind, though all doors were closed. I clutched again at Vespasian’s cloak.

  Vespasian’s voice dropped soft like the barely heard murmurings of water over sand. “If you bring that thing any closer,” he said, “I will destroy this convent and you with it.”

  There was a pause. The darkening in the corner hesitated. I couldn’t breathe. Then I felt Vespasian reach to my hand, his fingers probing my tight closed fist. I knew what he wanted and I gave it to him. He took the ouroboros and held it up. It was just a little wooden thing, smooth and blind, but in the lightless shadows it glowed rich golden with a sheen that came from nowhere.

  “No,” screeched the abbot. “You’ll kill us all. Use that, and your whore dies and you too.”

  “As usual, you are mistaken in many things,” said Vespasian, still smiling. Then he leaned over and gripped the abbot’s wrist, dragging him forwards. The swirl of darkening menace in the room gathered speed and height. I could not look away from it. Then the abbot screamed and everything happened at once.

  Vespasian had forced the ouroboros against Bernado’s pale forehead and for a second the little serpent seemed to curl there, burrowing into the skin below the tonsure until the abbot’s eyes were filled with pouring blood. I was sickened and couldn’t find breath, for there was no air left in the room. It was leached by some mounting horror. Beside me Vespasian held the struggling abbot. They were momentarily united, the coiled snake joining them as fire sears flesh to bone and the stench of burning exploded into black sparks and flying ash.

  The smoke stank. The roof above us split. A slashing light so white that it crackled, sprang down from above, raging power in one single blow straight through the beautiful pages of the bible, the table beneath it and the cupboard below. The abbot fell to the ground, clutching his chest as Vespasian flung him away like a broken cup. Vespasian turned to me and swung me quickly around to face him. “This whole place will burn,” he shouted above the turmoil of mounting and terrifying confusion. “Take these and guard them if you can. They are utterly precious.” He pressed the wrapped package and the ouroboros into my hands. “Now, run,” he demanded.

  I hesitated one moment but he had moved away from me and into the awful tumult. I ran.

  Chapter Forty Two

  There were ashes in my mouth and my lungs were hot and filled with fire. There was also something more horrible than fire. I raced through the corridors and into the great hall where a cluster of nuns watched me in alarm. I screamed at them, “Get out. The convent’s burning.”

  I didn’t wait to see if anyone followed me. Then I heard the bells. The main doors were open and I ran towards them, clutching up the frayed and grimed hems of my palla and skirts, the ouroboros stuffed down my bodice, Vespasian’s parcel under one arm, and my sword firm in my other hand. Then I heard the grinding of the falling beam and saw its long shadow spin as it tumbled directly in front of me. The flames shot up all along its length like little lizard’s tongues. The heat billowed into my face, though the sensation I felt was of sudden ice. My hair caught first and then my clothes.

  I whirled through vermillion, blood garnet, sulphur and raging golden fury. Yet nothing else in the hall burned. The attack was direct and this time against me alone. Against me, and what I carried. I lifted my cloak and threw it over my head, stifling the flames, still running for the doors. Then the larger blaze was all around me and the fire engulfed us all.

  I was unaware of pain. Vespasian had told me once, pain didn’t matter. There were other places where one could go, where pain could not exist. Now I stood outside on the long grassy slopes of those peaceful gardens where once I had tried to destroy the ouroboros, and I watched the building’s destruction, walls disintegrating in huge thundering flames as the roof cascaded inwards. Tiles and plaster and furnishings all crumbled. Beside me and in front of me the multitude of nuns gathered like fluttering flapping blackbirds, staring around, lost without the guiding discipline of routine. Others still ran squealing from the fires.

  “Lightening,” muttered one of the nuns to my left. “I saw it from the buttery. Lightning struck straight to the heart of the abbot’s chambers. But look, there’s no storm at all.”

  “God’s retribution,” whispered the other, her voice hardly audible above the roaring blaze, though we now stood far enough away.

  “But the storm’s coming,” said an older woman. She pointed up and I looked with the others. The peaceful autumn blue was churning into black cloud.

  “That rain will put out the fire,” I said. The nuns looked at me in a muttering of suspicion. Many recognised me, knowing my reappearance coincided with this sudden violence in their lives. Very carefully they moved away, banding tightly, distancing themselves from me.

  “She looks badly hurt,” whispered one to another. “Should we help?” I remembered the novice who had sat next to me at mealtimes and whose trencher I had shared.

  “That’s also God’s retribution,” said the older woman. “She brought the devil into God’s house.” I took no notice. I had put my sword away, the little wooden snake was safe between m
y breasts, and I clutched Vespasian’s parcel safe. Now I peered into the chaos below, searching for signs of him. That was all I cared about now.

  I heard the voice behind me before I heard the horse. “You should have moved further back, or did you think I might need saving again?” Vespasian was leading the horse up across the grass behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder and I swirled around, relieved and delighted. Then I realised my legs could no longer hold me and I crumpled, as if a dream were dissolving into wakefulness. He caught me, arms around my waist. He lifted me up and cradled me for a moment, looking deeply into my eyes. “Are you badly hurt? How did this happen? You should have been well clear before the flames took hold.”

  I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t. All the pain I’d ignored, waiting to be sure he was safe, now surged through every muscle. I burned as though the flames were still around me, coursing my veins. I could have fainted. It would have been a sweet escape, but Vespasian held me centred. He would not permit unconsciousness until he was sure of me. “In the main hall,” I whispered, as if he’d ordered an explanation and even controlled my tongue. “The beam fell. It was the only thing on fire in a cold room. It fell just onto me.”

  “His final vengeance,” murmured Vespasian, “before he died. Bernado was a fool. He overestimated his power, but at the end he managed to call up something that might have ruined us all.”

  “The lightening?”

  “Ah no.” Vespasian smiled, and it curved right into his mouth and eyes as I had rarely seen him. “That was another source altogether. You and I, Tilda, and the abbot too, we were audience to far greater powers than ours. The lightening blasted directly through the open pages of the bible. Only the God has the force to strike His own. They were the words of St. John and one of the purest oracles of alchemy. The destruction of the lightening was God’s anger for His word defiled.”

  “And the other thing? Something dark and horrible came into the abbot’s chambers.”

  “He tried to summon one of the lesser demons,” said Vespasian softly, still holding me tight. “That rank presence in the holy room was a direct invocation to God’s fury. So the demon fled the place of sacred retribution, and found you, it seems. Its malevolence was directed at you from the beginning since Bernado blamed you for my discovering his treachery. But you held the ouroboros, and the seal of Thoth. You could not have been badly hurt, I think.”

  “I’m getting used to pain,” sighed Tilda, leaning her head against the support of his shoulder. I had the devil of a headache.

  “Once again I’m afraid much of the blame is mine,” said Vespasian. “We have very little time, but I’ll do what I can to heal you first.”

  A hundred nuns clustered on the slopes but they kept apart from us, afraid to come too close. I saw the prioress among them. “And the abbot?” I asked.

  “He is quite dead,” said Vespasian, “but not by my hand. He was a good man once and I knew his value while he trusted me. Corruption travels along strange paths. It was his own Christian God who killed him.”

  I nodded. I was remembering the abbot’s eye sockets filling with blood as Vespasian forced the little serpent against his forehead. Vespasian may not have killed Bernado, but he had tortured him first.

  “What now?” I sighed, closing my own eyes.

  “Now?” said Vespasian. “Now it all begins. Now I will be tested at last and you will finally discover all the things I have long refused to tell you, which you should never know. Clearly it is destined that you be tested at my side. It is what I wished to avoid although knowing I have no power to alter the path of destiny, neither mine nor yours. But first, I must make you strong again.” He lifted me onto his horse and climbed quickly up behind me. He pulled on the reins and the horse wheeled, heading into the longer grass and leaping into a sudden gallop. I leaned back against Vespasian, his parcel safe between us, and the wind in my face was fresh and clean and cold, both relief and salve.

  I felt we flew. I hadn’t expected such speed from Vespasian’s tired old horse. Nestled safe, the rhythm eased the pain, but I kept my eyes open. I wanted to know where he was taking me. The pale sun was low in a lowering sky and each passing tree threw a long dark stripe across our path, disappearing beneath the horse’s galloping hooves like the rungs of a ladder. I’d thought the poor beast ugly, with his ribs all jagged and his eyes rolling like a drunken clown. Now he was sleek and beautiful and virile.

  The convent’s destruction was way behind us, even the rank scorched stench wind blown, and the black cloud that rolled over it like God’s wrath had disappeared. We were thundering into a silky twilight within a velvet night. I hoped we were going back to the forest house.

  Then I woke without having known that I slept, and we were not in the forest house at all.

  There were whisperings and soft murmurs and voices in the dark. “But she looks so badly injured,” said someone whose voice I recognised but could not place. I was on a soft bed and the curtains enclosed me. I couldn’t see beyond them but a candle was flickering to my side and the hangings shimmered deep crimson in the tiny flame.

  “They’re only surface burns,” said Vespasian. “She’s not as badly hurt as she seems.”

  “I don’t understand, my lord,” said the voice. “You said it would be too dangerous to bring her back here. You said she’d be safe at the convent.”

  “I cannot always be right,” answered Vespasian. I was sure he was smiling. “You must accustom yourself to my occasional fallibility.”

  “On the contrary. I believe - you – you’re perfect my lord,” said the younger voice. “Just tell me what to do – and I’ll do it.” Now I knew it was Gerald. He was trying very hard to be polite. He sounded desperately nervous.

  “The time to prove your courage has not yet arrived,” said Vespasian softly. “For the moment just be my squire and bring me water. Cold water from the deepest well. Then leave me alone with her, and go to your own bed. Tomorrow is the day of trial.”

  I heard Gerald leave and I tried to sit up. I was extremely stiff. My head pounded and when I put my hand to my forehead, it came away smeared with ashes and soot. The bed curtains snatched open and Vespasian looked down at me. He had not changed his clothes and looked sweat stained and travel creased, but his eyes were very bright. Behind him I saw details in candlelit relief, vivid colours, a hundred tapestries and a floor tiled in mosaic. It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen but I was afraid he’d brought me back to his castle by the river. He shook his head. He seemed to know exactly what I thought as if it was written in the soot on my face. “No,” he said, quite gently. “This is the estate of the Baron Tennaton and now belongs to Gerald. We are way north of the forest and far from my own southern estates.” He frowned then, holding the candle up to see me clearly. “Now, how do you feel?”

  “Better,” I lied. “Please tell me why we’re here?”

  “You are not better,” he said. “And just because I once offered to answer all your questions, doesn’t mean I intend to continue the service indefinitely. However, I’ll tell you this. Your burns are superficial. I’ll treat them, and then leave you. There’s something I have to do. You’ll stay with Gerald and be safe in this house until morning, when I shall return. In the meantime, you’ll sleep and not waste your strength with gossip. Do you understand me?”

  “Of course, I do,” I replied rather tartly. “You’re telling me to shut up and mind my own business and you’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He grinned. “Exactly. Remember it.” He put his arm behind me, lifting me against the piled pillows, goose down in fine linen and a soft support.

  “That hurts,” I mumbled. Pain tore across my chest and neck. I felt as though my head had split open.

  He didn’t apologise. “Evidently knowing me brings pain to many. And always to you,” he said softly. “Seemingly this is something I can no longer control. But I can be your nurse, as I have before against far greater abuses.”

  G
erald came back with a pail of water, hauling it two handed, staggering across to the bed and spilling a good deal. “You’re awake,” he said to me, huge with surprised smile. “Isn’t this incredible?”

  I couldn’t nod, because everything hurt. “You have a grand house,” I mumbled. “You’re a baron. That’s definitely incredible.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean all that,” he said at once. “I meant Vespasian, I mean, Jasper. His Lordship. And you. It’s amazing.”

  “That’s enough,” Vespasian interrupted him. “Bed, now my boy. And don’t come creeping back in here after I’m gone. I’ll be back with the dawn.”

  Gerald put the bucket of water beside the bed and left, looking back with a wave. Vespasian had begun ripping strips of linen and dipping them into the water. The room was warm but the water looked icy.

  “I can wash myself,” I said, watching him.

  “You cannot,” said Vespasian, continuing unperturbed. “Since the pain is doubtless comprehensive, you can neither judge nor see where the burns are most invasive. You’d soak the bed rather than yourself. And besides,” he did not even smile, “I enjoy undressing you.”

  Chapter Forty Three

  One side of my body had been singed by the flames, and now the cold water across my skin was bliss. Fragments of scorched material peeled back, still attached to my flesh. I turned my head away, breathed deeply and closed my eyes.

  Vespasian had stripped my clothes from my upper body, carefully removing the charred and ruined tunic, stolla and camise. I was burned in one narrow strip from the waist up across my left breast and shoulder, the width of the beam which had hurtled onto me. As his hands eased away each garment, then caressing with cool wet fingers, I struggled silently with my private mixture of pleasure and embarrassment. Though I flinched and sometimes trembled, Vespasian continued gently, ignoring what he certainly must have understood.