by Carol Berg
“Valen Militius, perhaps?”
Another dangerous topic. The young attendant monk’s dark brows lifted slightly. Attentive. At the worktable, Brother Robierre’s head was bent over his mortar and pestle, plants and vials, but his hands grew still.
Though I tried to dip my own head farther, being propped on my side made it difficult. “Not a professional soldier, holy father, far from it, nor even a worthy freeman-at-arms. But I once carried a pike for King Eodward, Iero cherish his soul, and stood behind him as he drove the Hansker barbarians back across the sea. He called us his men of light, and so we all felt more than what we were born.” All true. And now the test would come…
“And what of noble Eodward’s sons?” He touched the clean linen that wrapped my shoulder and made a blessing sign upon it. My flesh warmed beneath the bandage. “Which of the three princes owns your fealty? Or do you hope for this ghostly Pretender of current rumor?”
“None of them, holy father. Though the sign of three speaks of heaven, these three sons are so far from worthy of their kingly father that an ignorant lout such as I am cannot choose. And though I reverence any issue of good King Eodward, I fear that naught but tavern gossip has delivered him a fourth son.”
Unless I could discover with which prince this man’s favor rested, I dared not say more. Perryn of Ardra, whom I had chosen as being the most intelligent and least openly brutal of the half brothers, was surely dead by now, or in chains, babbling his plans and the names of his noble supporters to his brother Bayard’s torturers. In either case, my oath to him was moot. He had shown himself mean and so stubbornly inept that my loyalty had been ruined much earlier. He certainly was not worth dying for.
I glanced up. The gray eyes held steady, the long, slender bones of the abbot’s face unmoved. “So your wounds were not earned in battle, then?”
Well, the battle had been over months before we’d charged Prince Bayard’s line at Wroling—in the spring when Bayard of Morian had allied with Sila Diaglou and her Harrowers. But such quibbling wouldn’t carry weight with this abbot. Not with a wound in my back, and the admission requiring me to declare not only that I had run away, but which side I had deserted. I needed a better story.
“Nay, holy father, rather my wounds stem from a private dispute with another man regarding property that belonged to me. Though right was with me in the matter, I believed I was going to die and so confessed my sins to a village practor. He sent me on the road with my wounds untended as penance, saying the One God would put me in the way of death or life as was his will.”
I held still and listened carefully, fighting the urge to add more words to this collection of nonsense, such as what village I’d come from or why I had suffered the strikes of arrows rather than knife or club. It seemed a very long time until the abbot spoke again.
“Was this, by chance, the disputed property, Valen?”
The dark-browed monk stepped forward, pulled a book out of his black gown, and passed it to the abbot. The abbot laid it on the bed in front of my face, a squarish book some three fingers thick, its brown leather binding tooled in gold with gryphons and dragons, long-limbed angels, roundels, vine leaves, and every flourish of the leather gilder’s art. Slightly damp at one corner, but I quickly verified that the dampness had not touched the fine vellum pages enough to damage them or smear the ink.
“If so, and if you have any idea of what you carry and can tell me how you’ve come by it, then I may believe your story.”
I swallowed, puffed out a strong breath, and touched my finger to the golden letters on its cover and the familiar sigil of a gryphon carrying a rolled map in its claws. “Of course, holy father. This is the original volume of Maps of the Known World, created by the pureblood, Janus de Cartamandua-Magistoria, the most famous cartographer in all of Navronne’s history.” That part was true, of course. My mind raced. “It was given me…seven years ago…when, with Iero’s grace, my service…scouting…preserved the Mardane Lavorile’s troop from capture by the Hansker. Knowing a scout would understand its worth, his lordship said it was fitting recompense for the lives I had saved. One of these wild Harrowers tried to take it. They think to burn all books, you know.”
“So you are familiar with the book, studied it no doubt, used its guiding spells when you served the mardane?”
Monks valued books. New initiates often brought them. And the Karish would certainly want this one. Legend said it could lead men to the realm of angels.
“Of course, holy father. I used it often in the mardane’s service. I treasure each page.” Though my valuing had more to do with the gold coins of pawnbrokers than the gold crowns of angels.
The gray-eyed abbot nodded. “I’ll accept this tale for now. Brother Robierre is scowling, for I promised not to tire you. Tell me, Valen, what do you ask of Gillarine Abbey beyond your fortnight of sanctuary?”
This answer was much easier than the previous ones, requiring no instant work of the imagination. “To join your holy fraternity, holy father. To repent my licentious life and serve the god Iero, if I may.” That is, to eat and stay warm, dry, and anonymous until I decided where to go and what to do next to revive a fortune that seemed to have reached its nadir. Soldiering, the only work I’d found in two years, had decidedly lost its attractions.
“Granted,” said the abbot with astonishing speed. “Brother Sebastian will be your mentor, instructing and guiding you in our rule and custom. Brother Gildas, you will inform Sebastian and Prior Nemesio of our new aspirant.”
The dark-browed monk bowed respectfully from the hip.
Once prayers and blessings had ushered the two of them out, Brother Robierre appeared at my side, bearing a clay jar into which I took a grateful piss. He then passed the jar on to the piebald Brother Anselm, who settled at the worktable and began to dip and pour and examine my output as if it were the waters of the heavenly rivers. I recited my stories over and over in my head so I’d not forget them if questioned again.
After a while, the infirmarian provided me with a thick posset, not so savory as the chicken, but sweet, warm, and filling. Setting the empty mug aside, Robierre reached his hand toward the book that still lay on the bed with me. Hesitating. “May I?”
Eyelids heavy, I smiled. “For thou, blessed angel of the infirmary, anything.”
He chuckled, lifted the book from the bed, and ran his thick fingers lovingly over the binding. “A Cartamandua book of maps…to have such a thing come to Gillarine…You will be besieged with pleas to see it. Few of our brothers, even those who labor in the scriptorium, will have glimpsed so rare and precious a work or one so storied. The very book that led the Sinduré and the Hierarch to discover young Eodward in the realm of angels, the book that shows the hidden places of the world. What strange roads it must have traveled. Who would have thought that one like you would possess a sorcerer’s finest—? Ah, I’m sorry.” His sagging cheeks flushed in kind embarrassment.
“You’re not the first, good brother, not the first.”
Strange roads indeed! Until five days ago, when I’d discovered the book in a deserted manse I happened to be looting as I ran away from a battle I’d sworn to fight, I’d last touched it eleven years before at a bookshop in Palinur. I’d been desperate for money—a state less familiar then than now. I’d had to settle for less than its full worth because the book pawner refused to believe I’d come by it honestly. Neither the good Brother Robierre nor the pawner would believe—nor would I ever tell anyone, could I avoid it—that old Janus de Cartamandua himself had given it to me, his ill-behaved and unappreciative grandson, on my tumultuous and unpleasant seventh birthday. My parents had been furious.
Chapter 3
The bells in the abbey tower fell silent. Brother Robierre had hurried off to the chapter house for the monks’ daily meeting, and Brother Anselm had retired to his herb garden, closing the infirmary door softly behind them so as not to wake me. I heaved a deep and pleasurable sigh.
On this second
day of trying to sleep away my wounds in Gillarine’s infirmary, I had only three complaints of any substance. Firstly, the bells. Bells banged every hour day or night and set off a cacophony whenever the brothers were called to services, which seemed fifty times a day. Second, the shy lay brother Anselm devoutly believed that one window must always be left open in an infirmary to allow ill humors to escape the room, which caused a frigid draft whenever the outside door was opened. And third, endearing as I found Brother Badger, as I called the good infirmarian, a sick man should be exempt from excess praying. Feigning sleep was my only reprieve.
I tugged the blankets over my bare shoulder, luxuriated in the returning warmth from the hearth, and speculated about what delicacy the good brothers would bring from the abbey kitchens to fill my invalid’s stomach. I had always been a quick healer, but the brothers didn’t need to know that. Life was good.
“Comfortable, are you?”
My eyelids slammed open to reveal the abbot’s attendant sitting on the bedside stool. I’d heard not a step or a breath.
“Brother Gildas! How did you—?” Recalling my position as aspiring novice and the tedious duties that were like to involve the moment I was well enough, I checked my tongue and allowed my breath to quaver bravely. “Well, Brother, I’m as comfortable as a man can be with fever shakes and septic blood and holes in his flesh where there should be none. Bless you for asking.”
His dark brows lifted, and he pulled a wedge of cheese from under my pillow. “We’ll feed you even when you’re healed, Valen. And you needn’t fear I’ll tell the abbot that your devotions are perhaps more directed to his kitchen and his bed than his church at present. Every man here has his own reasons for piety.”
“The bounty of the good god is a fit occasion for thanksgiving,” I said a bit defensively, tucking the rest of my cache more securely under my head. “And surely he expects us to conserve that bounty for harder days.”
Perhaps it was their shaven heads that made this man and the abbot appear so intensely focused, their eyes dominant in their hairless skulls as if they might read a man’s very soul. Not that my soul was all that interesting—a man of seven-and-twenty summers who scrabbled from one job to another, doing as he needed to wrest a bit of enjoyment from a world that seemed worse off by the day. But at least this fellow was near enough my own age that he might remember something of a man’s needs.
“I do hear Iero’s call to the prayerful life quite clearly. But, in truth, Brother Gildas, I am yet a sinful man who enjoys the pleasures of bed and board overmuch. No matter how devoutly my soul yearns to reform, my body forever backslides.”
“And yet our abbot, whose eye is infinitely wise, judges you worthy of initiation. I’ve never known him so precipitate in judgment. He’d have you vowed before Saint Marcillus’s Day, scarcely a fortnight hence.” His head tilted as if to examine me from various angles, his deep-set eyes unwavering. “Well, neither you nor I may see the right of it, but the god scorns none with a good heart. We must have faith that he will illumine yours as he sees fit. Brother Sebastian has been charged with your guidance and instruction, but Father Prior has dispatched him to Pontia to investigate the rumor of two books brought in by traders. So I was asked to bring you these.”
He laid a worn book and a roll of parchment on the bed in front of me. “Your psalter, left by good Brother Horach, who passed to his next life not long ago. And a summary of Saint Ophir’s Rule, which you must commit to memory ere you take your novice vows. Brother Sebastian will discuss them with you upon his return.”
“A dead man’s book?” I said, drawing back from it as far as the heavy bolster allowed.
“He was not diseased, if that’s your worry.”
“No, no…”
I had long abjured the soldiers’ maxim that wearing a dead man’s boots or cooking in his pot would see your own life forfeit within a year. Books, as it happened, raised other problems.
“It’s just that…a holy saint’s book…for my eyes that have looked on so much of the Adversary’s wickedness to rest upon such precious pages seems sacrilege. Until I have confessed and labored out the days…months…of expiation, I doubt I could look upon a holy work without it bursting into eternal flame. And such a waste of a precious book that would be!”
Brother Gildas laughed—a pleasant, resonant sound—and shifted the book and scroll to the bedside table. “We must certainly get you up and working hard to soothe this burdensome conscience of yours. Do you not know that those who cross our threshold for sanctuary are cleansed of past offenses? You are a new man, Valen, whether you like it or not, as pure as a new-dipped babe. The only marks upon your soul will be those you scribe there from this day forward.”
The Karish hierarchs pronounced many tenets to admire, but this one—that an unwatered babe could be marked with evil, whereas a failed man of the world who had no intention of repenting his iniquities could be somehow purified by crossing a brick threshold—had always struck me as untenable.
I sighed deeply. “Oh. Well then, when my fever allows my blurred sight to clear, I’ll study both book and scroll.”
“If Brother Sebastian fails to return by tomorrow, I’ll come myself to quiz you on the Rule,” he said, rising from his stool. “And, of course, Father Abbot will require the details of your birth. We care naught for high or low, pureblood, noble, or common at Gillarine. But neither bonded men nor natural sons nor purebloods lacking dispensation from their family are permitted to join our order.”
“Of course.” I had the disconcerting sense that the monk felt my mind racing. “Tell me, Brother Gildas, where is my own book, the book of maps?” After the odd chance of happening onto such a rarity, I’d be a fool to lose track of it.
He smiled in a knowing fashion that I found somewhat annoying. “Safely locked into the abbot’s own book press. Father Abbot would not see such a treasure splattered with blood or possets. If you choose to leave before you take vows, of course it will be returned to you.”
He offered me a sip of the spicy caudle Brother Badger had left on the stool. I downed it gratefully. My awkward drinking posture left drips enough on my bed linens to make Brother Gildas’s point.
I would need to find the book. If this Elanus was a good-sized town, perhaps it had a knowledgeable pawner. A few weeks and I would suffer for my lack of silver. Of a sudden the beery sweetness of the caudle tasted of brine and bitter. Some of life’s unpleasantness could not be so easily evaded as Registry investigators or my family’s bloodhounds.
“Thank you, Brother. Iero grant you like mercy.” I licked a stray drop from my lips and let my eyelids sag, hoping the soft-spoken Gildas might forgo the prayers sure to accompany his departure. Like flies about raw fish, prayers seemed to cluster about every monkish activity.
But when his soft whisper came in my ear, it bore no pious sentiment. Holy words, nonetheless. “Mutton broth today.”
My laughter disrupted all my feigning. He smiled and vanished through the door as quietly as he’d come. I would have to watch my step with Brother Gildas.
With the skill of long experience I banished all thought of the future. Perhaps these good monks would solve all my ills—body and soul together.
My head had scarcely touched the pillow again when a clank of the latch and a damp, chilly whoosh of the draft signaled another arrival. A warm body hovered a handbreadth from my face like a restrained pup awaiting my word to begin licking. This one smelled of rain and mud, onions and innocence…and boy.
“Could this be the Archangel Jullian?” I said without opening my eyes. “He of the exquisite hearing and golden tongue, who shall have whatever service he needs of me from this day forward as thanks for preserving my feckless life?”
“Aye, it’s Jullian,” he said softly. “Are you asleep, then? I shan’t stay if you’re asleep. But I’m off sanctuary watch and on to kitchen duty as of this day’s chapter, so I’ve more time to see to you. Brother Robierre told me you’re healing astonis
hingly fast and are ready for visitors.”
I lifted my heavy eyelids and grinned. “Not asleep. Indeed I’m pleased for cheerful company. As long as you don’t make me pay for it by draining my wounds or poking my bruises.” Besides, the sooner I knew the ins and outs of Gillarine, the better, whether I chose to stay a season or not.
“I’ve brought you something to aid your healing. Water from Saint Gillare’s holy spring.” The boy held out a flask of amber-colored glass as reverently as if it held the saintly woman’s tears.
I drew back a little. “Water? Uh…I don’t…not usually…” I didn’t want to offend the boy, but I’d been leery of that ruinous beverage since my mother’s divination when I turned seven. Certainly many a soldier came to grief from it. “So kind. Thank you. But we’d best wait for Brother Bad—Robierre. I’m sure I heard him say my stomach was too weak for water as yet.”
He set the flask on the stool, then hiked up his coarse brown tunic and plopped down on the tile floor, leaving his face on a comfortable level with mine. Though the damp, matted hair cut bowl-shaped to his ears could have been any color, the fluff on the boy’s full lip and bony chin was red-gold in the lamplight and his skin ruddy. I judged him wholly Ardran. Most Navrons, especially the Moriangi of the riverlands to the north, bore some trace of either the black-haired Aurellian invaders of past centuries—my own ancestors—or the flaxen-haired Hansker who plagued our coast.
“I just wanted—Is there any further service I can offer? Something else I could bring you? A prayer I could offer? Whatever you need.” His voice belied his coarsening features and piped clear and boyish, putting him nearer twelve than fourteen to my mind. The ripe stench of less than diligent washing assured me he was entirely human male and no angel in disguise.