Isle of Glass

by Tarr, Judith

  “Brother,” Adam said, gently chiding, “your innocence rings false. The Bishop knows and sanctions our actions here, but what those actions are, surely you know.”

  Alf regarded him with wide, grey, human eyes. Not all of the fear there was feigned. “I’m no heretic!”

  “That, we will test.”

  “Sweet Jesu!” Alf knelt at his feet, a proud boy wakened suddenly to full knowledge of his peril. “Please, Brother, Domne. I’m a monk, a priest. I’ve loved God and served Him with all the faith that is in me. Would you make me suffer because two Bishops are at odds, and an Earl and a King have no love for one another?”

  “We do not play the games of the world,” Adam told him as gently as ever. “Lie down, Brother. You are not well enough yet to walk about.”

  Alf let himself be put to bed again, but he clutched the other’s hand, his own frail and trembling. “I’m not a heretic, Brother. By all the saints I swear it.”

  “That may well be,” Adam said. “But heresy is not the major charge.” He disengaged his hand from Alf’s. “Rest now. Later I shall return.”

  “Brother!” Alf cried. “For God’s sake—what else can I be guilty of?”

  The dark eyes were quiet. “Sorcery,” answered Brother Adam.

  Even as he spoke, the door closed upon him.

  o0o

  Alf lay on his back, then, after a time, on his face. He no longer felt ill, only aching, and tired.

  He rested his cheek on his arm above the manacle. The fabric of the black habit was finely woven, soft. It lay lightly on his bruised skin.

  Brother. Light too that touch upon his bruised mind. He saw Alun sitting in an angle of sunlight in the cloister of St. Ruan’s, hale to look on save for the bound hand and arm.

  His leg Alf could not see beneath the borrowed brown habit, but two knees bent for his sitting; he touched the right one. This came out of its bonds yesterday, he said. Sooner than you predicted, Brother.

  Alf smiled in spite of his troubles. Are you running races yet?

  Not quite yet. The lightness left Alun’s thoughts. Are you well?

  Well enough, Alf responded.

  Weak as his barriers were, Alun slid past them with ease. His inner voice was almost harsh. What it this? What has happened?

  Something I brought on myself, answered Alf. Have you sent word to Kilhwch?

  Yes. Alun stood, balancing on the strong leg and the weaker one, grey eyes stern. So this is how you would delay the war until our messenger can reach Richard. Who has you? The King himself?

  The Hounds of God.

  Alf reeled. Alun’s serenity had shattered, baring for an instant the furnace fires beneath. God in heaven! Are you trying to destroy yourself?

  After a long moment, Alf found that he could think again. My lord, he said, I’m doing what I have to do. Richard will be here when your messenger arrives.

  If Morwin discovers what he has sent you to, said Alun, the knowledge will kill him. He meant for you to be healed, not to be slain.

  Maybe they're both the same. Alf knotted his fists. My lord, promise me. Don't tell him what’s happened. If I live, it won’t matter. If I die...it’s not his fault. It’s not anyone’s. Not even God’s, though He made me what I am.

  Alun reached out through the otherworld. Alf. Come to me. Now.

  His command was potent. Yet Alf resisted. No. Be well, my lord. Recover quickly. And give my love to the Abbot.

  He gathered the tatters of his shield and firmed them as best he might. Fear rose strong in him that the Rhiyanan would break them down and compel him to forsake his intent.

  But Alun did not attack. When Alf ventured a brief probe, he was gone. No trace of his presence remained.

  20

  The narrow slit of window let in just enough light for a man to read by, more than enough for Alf’s eyes. He sat under it, book in hand, reading as quietly as if he had been in the library in St.Ruan’s.

  Brother Adam watched him for a long while through the grille. He did not seem to notice that he had an observer, although when the monk entered he revealed no surprise. He did not even look up.

  “Good morning, Brother,” Adam said. “Did you sleep well?”

  Alf raised his eyes. They were shining, remote. “Good morning,” he said.

  Adam’s glance found a bowl of food by the pallet, its contents untouched. “You did not break your fast.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Alf bent to his book again.

  The other stood over him. “What are you reading?”

  With a sigh, Alf shifted his mind fully from his book to his jailer. “Boethius,” he answered.

  “The prisoner and the Lady Philosophy. Very apt.”

  “Yes,” Alf said. “It is apt. Too apt, perhaps. The prisoner was executed.”

  “But Philosophy consoled him most completely before he died.”

  “Did she? In the end...I wonder.”

  “If you are innocent,” Adam said, “you will not die.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “Do you deny that you have practiced sorcery?”

  Alf stared at the page, not seeing the words written there, seeing his choices, truth or falsehood, death or life, and Kilhwch’s messenger riding hard through the hills of Gwynedd. “What do you mean by sorcery?” he asked.

  “You do not know?”

  With his thumb Alf traced the cross graven on one of his shackles. “People say I’ve bewitched the King. I haven’t. He likes to look at me; he likes to listen to me. There’s no sorcery in that.”

  “Except the old one of Venus.”

  “Jove had his Ganymede,” Alf said, “and Achilles his Patroclus, but Richard has never had his Alfred. By witchery, or by any other way.”

  “Yet you could have cast a spell upon him if you had wished it.”

  “How, Brother? Have you found a grimoire under my pillow?”

  Brother Adam sat on the pallet. "There are two types of sorcerers,” he said. “Sorcerers proper, men of human blood and breeding, whose spells are the work of art and of skill, aided by the grimoires you speak of and by sundry devices of human or demonic construction: astrologers, alchemists, soothsayers and herb-healers. These are common and easily found out, and often converted to the path of righteousness. Yet there is a second, rarer brood, whom we call witches, elf-wights, people of the hills. Power does not come to these by study and by art; they need no books of magic, no powders or philters or chanting of spells. No; the power is born in them, and fills them from the moment of their conception.”

  Alf laughed a little, incredulously. “You think I’m—what? Hob o’ the Hill? Are you mad?”

  From a pocket of his robe Adam brought out a disk of silver no larger than his palm. When he held it up, Alf saw his own face reflected there. “Look,” Adam said. "What do you see?”

  “Myself.”

  “Have you ever seen such a face before?”

  Alf blushed. “I—I’m not ugly. But I can't help that.”

  “Is your beauty a common, human beauty?”

  Alf turned away from the mirror. “Must I be condemned because I look like this?”

  “Not for that reason, but for what it indicates. God has marked the elven-folk that they may not be lost among the race of men—has made them surpassingly fair, as fair without as their hearts are black within.”

  “I am a priest,” Alf said tightly. “A man of God.”

  “Truly?”

  “The water of baptism did not sear the flesh from my bones; nor did the chrism of my ordination send me howling into the dark. I have raised the Host in the Mass, aye, more times than I can count; and never once have I been stricken down.”

  “For that, I have only your word.”

  Alf rose, trembling. “Test me. Give me the consecrated bread; make me drink of the wine. Say the Mass before me—say the very rite of exorcism over me. I am neither witch nor demon; I am simply Alfred of St. Ruan’s.”

  Adam nodded slo
wly as if to himself. “So you say. You were a foundling, I am told.”

  “My mother died; I don’t know who my father was. I was given to the abbey as a hundred other children have been, before and since.”

  “By three white owls?”

  Suddenly Alf was very still. “Owls? Who told you that?”

  “We have heard tales, round about.”

  “Owls.” Alf shook his head. “That’s absurd.”

  “You came to this city in the company of a hound. A wondrous hound, white yet with red ears, such as the old people say runs at the heels of the Lord of the Otherworld or on the trail of the Wild Hunt.”

  “Because,” Alf said with taut-strung patience, “such beasts are bred all over Anglia. Of course Arawn or Herne the Hunter would have a pack of them.”

  “Then whence came yours?”

  “She’s not mine. She followed us; she might have belonged to one of the rebels the King’s men slew. She comes and goes, depending on whether one of us is disposed to feed or pet her.”

  “Indeed,” Brother Adam said. “Do you deny that you have practiced sorcery?”

  Alf lifted his chin. “Yes,” he answered. “I do deny that I have practiced the black arts.”

  Adam stood, unruffled. “So. I am sorry that I interrupted your study of Master Boethius.”

  The other stared at him. “You won’t let me go?”

  “I cannot.” Brother Adam sketched a blessing in the air. “Dominus vobiscum.”

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” Alf responded, signing himself with more defiance than reverence.

  Adam smiled and took his leave.

  o0o

  The axe swung skyward; poised for a moment against the sun; flashed down. Its victim fell, cloven neatly in two.

  “That for the cursed Hounds,” Jehan muttered.

  He set another log on the block and sent it the way of its fellow. There was an odd, crooked comfort in that labor. At least it was action, if not the action he wanted.

  He scowled at the block, seeing upon it Reynaud’ s thin sharp face, and smote with all his strength.

  “Well smitten!”

  He gritted his teeth. Company, he neither needed nor wanted. He reached for a log, hitched his habit a little higher, and raised the axe.

  “Again,” said his observer, “well smitten.”

  He turned, glaring, and stopped short. The King stood there in the mud of the kitchen garden, alone and unattended, and laughing at his expression.

  He dropped the axe and knelt, bowing his head. “Sire,” he said. “Majesty. I didn't know—”

  The King cut him off “Get up. You’re not at court here.” Although his words were sharp, amusement danced still in his eyes.

  Jehan rose. Only one thing could have brought the King alone to this place; that knowledge turned his startlement to something very much like fear. With care under the other’s eye, he rolled down his sleeves and let his habit fall properly to his feet.

  But there was no concealing his face. He arranged it as best he might and said, “You gave me a start, Sire. I thought you were one of the Brothers.”

  “I don’t look much like a priest, do I?” Richard inspected the heap of new-cut wood and took up the axe, testing its balance. “So this is how Aylmer trains his knights. Practical. I should try it with my own men.”

  “Only if you want axemen, Sire,” Jehan said.

  “True enough. It’s no good trying to hew wood with a sword. Though if I could set the swordsmen to harvesting grain and the mace-men to slaughtering sheep...”

  Jehan laughed. “And the lancers could practice on cows, and what would Bishop Aylmer do for penances?”

  “You’re being punished, are you?”

  “Yes, Sire,” Jehan looked down, shamefaced. “I was reading in the hayloft instead of working in the kitchen. So I hew wood and draw water until my lord sees fit to let me go.”

  To his credit, Richard neither frowned nor smiled. “And when will that be?”

  The novice shrugged. “When he pleases, Sire. But that’s fair enough as penances go. I could have got a caning. Would have if I'd been in my old abbey.”

  “You sound singularly unrepentant.”

  Jehan raised his eyes. “Why, Sire! I’m most repentant that I have to spend my days here instead of in the tilting yard.”

  The King grinned and placed a log upright on the block. He measured it with his eye and raised the axe.

  It was not an ill stroke, Jehan thought, both amused and shocked that a King should want to try his hand at a villein’s work. “Sire," he said. “You really shouldn’t—”

  “I really shouldn’t be here.” Richard essayed a second blow. “In fact, I’m not here at all. I’m closeted with Bishop Aylmer.”

  Jehan was silent. The King set down the axe and dusted his hands on his riding leathers. “This is easier work than hewing heads. A log can’t hit back.”

  “The worse for the log,” Jehan said. He did not move to resume his task. “Did Bishop Aylmer send you here, my lord?”

  “Bishop Aylmer is cooling his heels in my workroom.” The good humor had vanished from Richard’s face; his eyes were fierce. “And what’s His Majesty of Anglia doing running his own errands? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  After a moment Jehan nodded.

  The King nodded also, sharply. “Some things even a King can’t pass on to underlings. Or he passes them on and they disappear, and he never sees them again. That, boy, is called ‘humoring the King.’ ”

  “It’s also called ‘burying the evidence.’ ”

  Richard laughed shortly. “So. You’re smarter than you look. Are you too clever to tell the truth?”

  “That depends on what you want to know, Sire.”

  “Nothing theological. Not even anything personal. Just a simple thing. It’s so simple that I've spent a full three days trying to find it out, which has done my war no good at all. I've been sent by proxy from pillar to post, till I’ve had to set my own hand to it or never know at all.” The King leaned close, so close that Jehan could see nothing but the glitter of his eyes. “Where is Brother Alfred?”

  Jehan blinked. “Brother Alfred, Sire?”

  “Brother Alfred,” Richard repeated as to a witless child. “The tall one with no color in him. Do you remember him?”

  “Sire,” Jehan said, “you came here just for him? But why to me?”

  The King stepped back, scowling. “Just for him. Yes. And to you, you young fox with an ox’s face, because he called you his friend. Which is more than he would do for me. Where is he?”

  “You haven't seen him, Sire?”

  “Boy,” Richard said very softly, “I have not seen Alfred since he promised to attend me after I hunted, three days ago, and he never came. I thought it was one of his moods. But he didn’t come the next day when I called for him, and the page I sent was told that he couldn’t see the Brother, even at the King’s command. And so the next messenger I sent, and the next. This morning I heard a whisper that Brother Alfred couldn’t come because he wasn’t there. More: he went out walking three days past, and never came back.” The King spoke more softly still, a near-whisper. “Where has he gone?”

  Jehan ran his tongue over his lips. “Sire. He is gone. But I can't tell you where.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  “Can’t, my lord. He went out, as you've heard. No one’s seen him since. We—we think—someone took him.”

  “And why couldn’t he simply have run away?”

  “Sire,” Jehan said hotly, “if you know him, you know that’s not his way. He gets moods and he does strange things, but he’d never run off without telling anybody. Especially not on foot, with nothing on but his habit and a book in his hand.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “You saw him go?”

  “No, Sire. Would to God I had! But I was playing truant, and when I came back, he—he was gone.” Jehan struggled to keep his voice steady. “I know someone took him. I know it.”


  “Taken,” Richard muttered. And, louder: “He’s sent you no word?”

  “No, Sire.” Jehan’s calmness shattered altogether. “Sire, don’t you think I’ve tried everything I can? I even went to Bishop Aylmer and tried to get him to send out searchers. When he told me to wait, I yelled at him. That’s why my penance isn’t limited to a day or two. He—he told me to be patient and let him do what he could, and—and not talk to anyone about it.”

  “Did he?”

  The King’s tone made Jehan cry out, “He’s no traitor! I’m sure of it. But he said, if Brother Alf’s been taken, his takers must be your enemies. They haven’t asked for a ransom; they must want you to go after him and fall into a trap, and maybe get killed. That’s why my lord hasn’t let you know the truth. He wants to find Brother Alf himself and spare you the danger.”

  “Fool,” Richard said. “He’ll find a corpse or nothing at all, and likely get his death by it.”

  “Sire!”

  Richard hardly heard him. “I’ll find him. As God is my witness, I’ll find him, alive and whole and telling me I was mad to have tried it.”

  “Your Majesty,” Jehan said, shaking but determined, “you can’t do that. Your court—your war with Gwynedd—”

  “Damn the court! Damn the war! Damn the world! I’ll have that boy back, or I’ll cast my crown in a dungheap.”

  “He’s only one man.”

  “He’s only my friend.”

  o0o

  Long after he was gone, Jehan stood, trembling uncontrollably. When at last he could command his body, he sat on the block and breathed deep. Now the King would ride out, searching for a traitor. Bishop Aylmer had wanted that; had all but challenged Richard to try it.

  But he would not search in St. Benedict’s. That, the Bishop would make sure of. With the King abroad on a fruitless chase and the war in Gwynedd forgotten, the Church would look after its own.

  And the least of its novices would wait and pray, and try not to think of what the Hounds might be doing to Brother Alf. Jehan rose and took up the axe and returned grimly to his penance.

  o0o

  Brother Adam sighed wearily. “Will you not confess?”

  “No,” Alf said with equal weariness. “I am not the Devil’s minion. I know nothing of the black arts.”