by Tarr, Judith
“It wasn’t Foulques. They would have pursued me no matter who I was.”
“Would they?”
“Yes,” Alf said. “I told them the truth, Sire. I’m no demon nor any demon’s servant. But that was only half of the truth they looked for. The woman they tried to burn...was no less human than I.”
Richard’s face did not change. “The holy angel? So she was like you. I thought so. Clever of her to make such a spectacular exit.”
Alf was speechless.
Richard laughed. “Thought I was just another mortal fool, didn’t you? I grant you, for a long time I was. But while I was combing the Fells for you it all came together. Even the most dutifully Christian monk doesn’t take a foreign king’s command to heart unless he has good reason. Such as that that King is his kinsman.”
“My ancestry—”
“Probably it’s as low as you want to think it is. But you’re one of Gwydion’s kind. They hang together, those Fair Folk in Rhiyana. Did he send the woman to help you?”
“She came of her own accord.”
“Ah,” said Richard. “Was she as beautiful as you?”
“More so.”
“Impossible.” The King stretched. “Rather interfered with your attempt at martyrdom, didn’t she?”
Alf’s cheeks burned. “I was acting like a fool, my lord. She knew it. And so, at last, do I.”
“Someday I’ll find a way to thank her for that. When I realized what you were, I knew where you had to be. Nigh killed a good horse getting back here—just too late. If you’d had your way, by then you’d have been a pile of ashes.”
Alf shivered. Richard struck his brow with his fist. “What am I doing, wearing you out with things you’d rather not hear? Walter! Food and drink, and water the wine!”
o0o
It was not the King’s servant who brought the meal, but Jehan.
Richard scowled at him but said nothing. He set the cups and bowls on the table by the bed with such admirable self-control that Alf smiled. He did not even look at the invalid, although he bowed to the King, every inch the royal page.
“Jehan,” Alf said, “are you angry with me?”
The novice spun about. His face had the stiff haughty expression it always wore when he was lighting back tears. “Angry, Brother Alf? Angry?”
“I’ve made you suffer terribly.”
“Not as much as you’ve made yourself.”
“Ah, but I wanted it.”
“I know. Idiot.” Jehan looked him over with a critical eye, only a little blurred with tears. “You look ghastly. When’s the last time you ate?”
Alf could not meet his gaze. “I don’t remember.”
“That long? Deus meus!” Jehan sat on the side of the bed and reached for a bowl. “Broth then and nothing else, till we've got your stomach used to working again.”
“But I'm not—”
“You’re never hungry. That’s most of the trouble with you. Will you eat this yourself or shall I feed you?”
Beyond Jehan’s head, Alf could see Richard’s broad grin. With a sigh he took the bowl and raised it to his lips.
o0o
“He rode into Carlisle like the wrath of God,” Jehan said when Richard had gone to contend with his court, “galloped through the crowd, scattering them right and left, and stopped dead in front of Bishop Foulques.
“Odd,” the novice went on. “I expected him to blister our ears with curses. But he just sat there on his heaving horse with his men straggling up behind him, and stared. The Bishop turned the color of a week-old corpse and started to babble. The King put up his hand; old Foulques lost his voice altogether.
“The Hounds were howling like mad things about witches and sorcerers and spells; the kerns were yelling about saints and martyrs and miracles. Some people were fighting, the guards who were Hounds against a bravo or six from the town.
“The King had his man blow his trumpet. That quieted people down a little. ‘Aylmer,’ he said and pointed to the people on the platform, ‘take these men into custody.' Bishop Aylmer did, except for Earl Hugo and his lady, who’d scampered for cover as soon as they heard the King’s trumpet.
“The King didn’t stop to watch. He took you up on his saddle—had to fight me for you, too, till I saw the sense in it—and carried you to the keep. Nobody got in his way.” Jehan shivered. “I hope I never see anyone look like that again. He was almost as white as you, and he looked as if he wanted to cry but couldn’t, and the not being able to made him want to tear the world apart.”
Alf rested his forehead on his arm. His voice was soft, muffled. “Did he curse me?”
Jehan hesitated. Then: “Only after his doctor said you’d be all right. He has an impressive vocabulary." After a moment, when Alf made no response, he added, “He stayed with you all day. He wouldn’t go out at all, for anything.”
There was a long silence. Jehan thought Alf had fallen asleep, until he said, “Thea is gone.”
“As soon as it’s safe, she’ll be back.”
“No. She’s gone. She’s kept me from getting myself killed; she’s had enough of me. She’s gone back to her own people.”
“I suppose you’re relieved,” Jehan said. “You never liked her much, did you?”
Alf did not answer.
o0o
The King did not submit Bishop Foulques and his allies to the disgrace of a public trial. His revenge was more subtle. He spoke privately with the Bishop, with the Earl, and with the Paulines; and each emerged in somewhat worse state than when he had entered.
“It’s what we intriguers call a ‘settlement,’ ” Aylmer explained to Alf afterward. “Foulques has changed his allegiances rather than find himself Bishop of Ultima Thule. Hugo has become the most loyal of the King’s men, with his eldest son for a surety. And our Brothers of St. Paul have found sudden and urgent reasons to leave the kingdom.”
Jehan laughed. “Urgent is the word. None of them dares to show his face out of doors. The kerns are in a rage that the priests of holy Church have tried to burn one of God’s own angels; they’d gladly put a Hound or two in the fire.”
“I’d gladly oblige them,” the King said, “but I know I’d never have any peace if I tried.”
Alf smiled. He had managed to bathe with Jehan’s help and dress in a cotte of Richard’s, and sit propped carefully with pillows. With the King and the Bishop and the novice about him and a page waiting to serve him, and half a dozen servants hovering within call, he knew how a prince must feel.
“You’re the people’s darling now,” Jehan told him. “Everyone who said you were a sorcerer is swearing up and down that you’re a saint, and that God sent His angel to save you from the fire. Sir Olivier’s been going about declaring that you healed him with Divine power, and promising every farthing he has to charity because he testified against you.”
Alf’s smile turned to a look of dismay. “I’m anything but a saint. I'm not—even—” His voice died.
“You are,” said Bishop Aylmer. “I’ve revoked your suspension.”
They waited for him to wake to joy. But he shook his head. “My lord, I'm most deeply grateful. And yet... No. I haven’t functioned as a priest for a long while. Not since I became fully aware of what I am. But I couldn’t bear to give up the duties and offices of a simple monk, mockery though they were, performed by one who was not a man.”
All three moved to speak; he silenced them with a glance. “I know; you think I’m wrong. Like Abbot Morwin, you think a child of the Fair Folk can be as good a priest as any mortal man. Maybe one can; maybe I can. But I know what the Church says—know it as well as the Paulines knew. Until I’m certain of the truth, I can’t call myself a man of God.”
“You are,” Jehan said. “You are!”
Alf touched the other’s knotted fist, lightly. It tightened; then it sprang open to grip his hand with painful force.
“Brother Alf,” Jehan said, though he shook his head at the title. “You’ll alwa
ys be that to me. But...if this will help you, or heal you...then do it. Only, don’t tear your soul apart for a few empty words.”
“Sometimes one has to be torn apart in order to grow.” Alf smiled his familiar wry smile, that Jehan had not seen in a long while. “See: I’m even getting wise in this my old age. There may be hope for me yet.”
o0o
Alf promised to sleep if he were left alone. That won suspicious glances, but at length even Jehan withdrew.
He did sleep a little despite a rebirth of pain. In his dreams he endured again the stroke of the lash; and suddenly he held the whip, and the prisoner chained to the stake had a woman’s white body and a fall of bronze-gold hair.
He dropped the whip in horror; she turned in her chains. Her eyes held the old familiar mockery. “What, little Brother! Can’t you even flog me properly?”
“I’m not a priest any more,” he said.
She laughed and stretched, sinuous as a cat. The chains fell away. “Not a priest? You? I don’t believe it.”
“I decided I needed to grow up. They were right in St. Ruan’s, you know. The sacrament cast a spell on me; I stayed a boy, mind as well as body. But I’ve broken the spell. I’ll be a man now.”
“Truly?” She approached him. He stood his ground, although he trembled violently. Her hands tangled themselves in his hair, that had grown thick and long, shoulder-long; she drew his head down. He felt his body kindle. Only with her, he thought. Only, ever, with her.
“Such a handsome boy,” she said. “Will you be a man?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes.”
o0o
He started awake. No warm woman’s body stirred beneath him; no wild pale mane brushed his shoulders. He staggered up and groped for the watered wine Jehan had left for him.
A deep draught steadied him somewhat. He sat on the bed, head in hands. “Poverty,” he said. “Chastity. Obedience. Poverty, chastity, and obedience. Three vows, little Brother. Only three. And she is gone away and will never come back.”
He drained the cup. Again he stood, swaying. Among the King’s belongings he found a voluminous dark cloak. He settled it about his shoulders, flinching as the weight of fabric roused his back to pain.
No one saw him leave the King’s chamber. He went slowly, concealing his face from those he passed; thronged to bursting as the castle was, he passed unnoticed.
It was raining without, a grey cold rain. He bent his head beneath it and made his way through the town.
o0o
Brother Adam paced the length of St. Benedict’s cloister, heedless of the wind that swirled round the carved and painted columns to fling rain in his face. No one else had braved the weather, save one latecomer who paused in an archway, wrapped from crown to ankle in a dark cloak. Yet, swathed though he was, the stranger wore neither shoes nor sandals; his feet were bare, spattered with mud as if he had walked a distance in the wet.
He let his hood fall back. Adam regarded him without surprise.
“Brother Alfred,” he said.
“‘Brother’ no longer,” said Alf.
“No?”
“You of all people will admit that it is fitting.”
“Perhaps.”
Alf drew nearer to him, undisguised. He shivered slightly but stood his ground. His mind was a wondrous thing, elegantly ordered, shaped for the glory of God. Yet its foundations had begun to crumble.
Adam’s voice was very quiet. “Get out of my mind.”
“You know what I am,” Alf said.
Still quietly, without malice, Adam responded, “You walk as a man, you pass as a man. But a man you can never be.”
“You didn’t denounce me.”
“Perhaps I should be damned for it.”
“For mercy?”
“For suffering a witch to live.”
“It’s a strange thing,” Alf said. “We deny the power of the Old Law; we revile those who follow it still. But when it suits us, we follow it to the letter.”
“A witch,” said Adam, “has set the keystone upon our theology. Alfred of St. Ruan’s, you are such a creature as would drive Rome mad.”
“Rome, and you, and myself. I’m learning, slowly, that sanity lies in acceptance. The world the Church has made is a world of men, but does it encompass all of the world that God has made?”
“You tread upon the edges of heresy.”
“Don’t we all? When you defined yourself to me, you implied that evil had created me, that God had no part in it. And that, Brother, is the error of the Manichees.”
“It is a dilemma,” Adam said. “You are a dilemma. It is a sin and it is a child’s folly, but I would that you had never been born.”
“Or that I had truly been evil?”
Adam’s face was drawn as if with pain. “Yes. Yes, God help me. There are priests who live lives far less pure than yours, witch-born though you are, and no one censures them. And I knew this, and I kept silence in despite of the Law.”
“You are a compassionate man.”
“I am a fool!” He controlled himself with a visible effort. “I shall do penance. I am leaving my Order; I shall set sail over sea to Hibernia and dwell there in solitude, far from any man. Perhaps I shall learn to forget you.”
Quietly Alf said, “I can make you forget.”
Adam threw up his hands as if to avert a blow. “No!”
Alf bowed his head.
The Pauline monk drew a breath, struggling to steady himself. At length he managed a faint, bitter smile. “You were a far better prisoner than am I. Does it amuse you to see how low I have fallen?”
“No.”
Adam shook his head in disbelief. “Come now. Surely you came to taste your revenge. You have overthrown a great Order in Anglia and driven Reynaud mad beyond all healing, and cost the King’s enemies two of their strongest supporters. Are you not human enough to be glad of it?”
“No,” Alf repeated. “You called me. I came as soon as I could.”
“I never—” Adam fell silent. He looked his full age, sixty years and more. Hard years, all of them, and this the hardest of all.
Alf laid light hands on his shoulders. He shuddered and closed his eyes, but did not draw away. “Brother. Alone of all my enemies, you did what you had to do, for the love of God and of the Church, and never for yourself.”
“That I should hear such words from one of your kind...” Again Adam shuddered. “Yet you mean them. Soulless, deathless, inhuman—you mean them.”
“Perhaps I have no soul, but I am as much God’s creature as any other being upon this earth.”
“‘Let all the earth proclaim the Lord... ’ Ah God! You torment me.”
Alf let his hands fall. “I meant to heal you.”
“I think I may be beyond any healing but God’s.”
“Then I pray that He will make you whole again.”
“Perhaps,” Adam said, “He will hear you.”
The other drew up his hood and gathered his cloak about him. “If I were a man, I would want to be your friend. Since I am not, may we at least part without enmity?”
Slowly Adam nodded. “That...I can give you. I too regret that we are what we are.”
Alf bowed to him as if he had been a great lord. "The Lord be with you,” he murmured.
For a long while Adam stood where Alf had left him. At last he raised a trembling hand and sketched a blessing in the air.
Very softly he whispered, “And with your spirit.”
24
“The Devil’s Crown.” Richard held it up to the light: the great Crown of Anglia, set with rubies like drops of blood. “That’s what my father used to call it.” He set it on the bed beside Alf, rubbing his brows where the weight had plowed deep furrows in the flesh. “He used to call us the Devil’s brood, and say that his grandmother would be delighted to see what we’d turned into.”
“There’s no taint of evil in you,” Alf said, venturing to touch a point of the crown with his fingertip. “No
r in this,” he added, although he sensed power in it, the power almost of a sacred thing.
“I’m the great-grandson of a devil,” Richard said.
“The Demon Countess? Maybe she was one of us.”
“Hardly. She’d sit through Mass just up to the Credo, no more. The day her lord made her stay longer, she held on until the Consecration. Then she grabbed up the two closest of her offspring and flew shrieking out of the window. No one ever saw her or the boys again. Likely enough, when Father went to his well-deserved place in Hell, he found his uncles there already, stoking the fires.”
“I think you’re proud of it.”
The King grinned at him. “Why not? It’s a noble ancestry, though it’s come down a bit in the world.”
“My lord!”
Richard laughed aloud. “You look like a virgin in a guardroom.”
“I am a—” Alf bit his tongue. “Sire, I’m learning to live as a worldling, but couldn’t I do it slowly?”
“All at once, or not at all,” Richard decreed. He tilted a jar, found it still half full of spiced wine, poured a cupful for each of them. “Consider it a punishment. Because of you, I’ll be riding to war with half the men I need and with winter breathing down my neck.”
Alf held the cup but did not drink. “You persist in this madness?”
“In spite of all your tricks,” Richard answered, “yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Alf took the crown and laid it on his knee. It was very heavy, too heavy, surely, for a mortal head to bear. “Take me with you,” he said.
The King paused. Alf did not look at him. “What would you do on a winter campaign?”
“Ride,” Alf answered. “Tend the wounded.”
“And browbeat me into surrender. No. You’ll stay here and mend. When the court goes to Winchester for Yule, you’ll go with it.”