Scarlet

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  I sit in the cold dark and damp of my cell, waiting for daylight and hoping against hope that Odo will come early, and I pray to God that my scribe has true compassion in his heart.

  I pray and wait, and pray some more, as it makes the waiting easier.

  I am at this a long time when at last I see the dim morning light straggling along the narrow corridor to my cell. I hear Gulbert the jailer stumbling around as he strikes up a small fire to heat his room. I content myself with the sorry fact that our jailer lives only a little better than his prisoners. He is as much a captive of the abbot as I am, if not the more. At least I will leave this rank rat hole one day and he, poor fella, will remain.

  Odo is long in coming. I shout for Gulbert, asking if the scribe has been seen, but my keeper does not answer me. He rarely does, and I remain a tightly wrapped bundle of worry until I hear the murmur of voices and then the scrape of an iron door against the stone flags of the corridor. In a moment, I hear the familiar shuffling footfall, and my heart leaps in my chest.

  Easy now, Will me lad, I tell myself, you don’t want to scare the scribe; he’s skittery enough as it is without you gettin’ him up all nervous. So to make it look like I have been doing anything but waiting for him, I lie back on my musty mat and close my eyes.

  I hear the jingle of a key, and the door to my cell creaks open. “Will? Are you asleep?”

  I open one eye and look around. “Oh, it is you, Odo. I thought it might be the king of England bringing my pardon.”

  Odo smiles and shakes his head. “No luck today, I fear.”

  “Don’t be too sure, my friend.” I sit up. “What if I told you I knew a secret that could save our sovereign king from black treachery and murder, or worse.”

  Odo shakes his head. “I know I should be well accustomed to your japes by now . . .” The look in my eye brings him up short. “I do begin to believe you are in earnest.”

  “Aye, that I am, lad.”

  I am pleased to see that he is in a mood to humour me this morning. He settles heavily into his accustomed place. “How will you save King William?”

  “I will tell you, my friend, but you must promise me a right solemn oath on everything you hold most sacred in the world—promise me that what I tell you will not pass your lips. You cannot write it down, nor in any other way repeat what I say to another living soul.”

  He glances up quickly. “I cannot.”

  “You will, or I will not say another word.”

  “Please, Will, you do not understand what you’re asking.”

  “See here, Odo, I am asking you to pledge your life with mine—no more, no less.” He would look away, but I hold him with the strength of my conviction. “Hear me now,” I continue after a moment, “if I am wrong, nothing will happen. But if I am right, then a great treachery will be prevented and hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives will be saved.”

  He searches my face for a way out of this unexpected dilemma. All his natural timidity comes flooding to the fore. I can see him swimming in it, trying to avoid being swept away.

  Fight it, Odo, boy. It is time to become a man.

  “Abbot Hugo . . . ,” he begins, then quits. “I could never . . . he would find out anything you said . . . he would know.”

  “Has he the ears of the devil now? Unless you told him, he would never know.”

  “He would find out.”

  “How?” I counter. Here is where the battle will be fought. Is his desire to do right stronger than his fear of the black abbot?

  After a moment, I say, “Only the two of us will know. If you say nothing to him, then I fail to see how Hugo will ever know what I mean to tell you.”

  He looks at me, his round face a tight-pinched knot of pain.

  “It is life and death, Odo,” I tell him quietly. He is that close to fleeing. “Life and death in your hands.”

  He stands abruptly, scattering pen and parchment and spilling his inkhorn. “I cannot!” he says, and bolts from the cell.

  I hear his feet slapping the stones in the corridor; he calls Gulbert to let him out, and then he’s gone.

  Well, it was a risk doomed from the start. I should have known better than to think he could help. Now escape is my only hope, and it is such a starved and wretched thing it brings sad tears to my eyes. I tug at the chain on my leg and feel the lump in my throat as frustration bites. To hold the solitary answer to the riddle of the baron’s treasure—to be entrusted with the key to free Elfael and to be unable to use it—that fair makes the eye-water roll down my whiskered cheeks.

  I lie on my filthy bed and think how to get word to Bran, and my head—dull from these weeks and months of captivity—feels like a lump of useless timber. I think and think . . . and it always comes out at the same place. I can do nothing alone. I must have help.

  Oh, God, if it is true that you delight in a heartfelt prayer, then hear this one, and please send Odo back.

  CHAPTER 35

  Odo returns, and so quickly that I am surprised. He has not shown such clear and ready resolve before. There is something on his mind—a blind man could see it—and he has come back with all the bluster of a fella who has made up his mind to embark on a dangerous journey, or a long-neglected chore that will get him mucked up from heel to crown. I do greatly wonder at the wild glint in his soft brown eyes. This is not the Odo I have come to know.

  So, here is Odo, standing outside the door of my cell, like a faithful hound returning to a harsh master he would rather forgive than leave. I see he has his parchment and goose feather in one hand and inkhorn in the other as always; but the sharpness in his aspect gives me to know this is not like all the other times.

  “Are you coming in, Odo?” I say. He has made no move to join me.

  “I have to know something,” he says, glancing down the corridor as if he fears we might be overheard. Gulbert, if he hears anything from the cells at all, is long past caring. “I have to know beyond all doubt that you will not betray me.”

  “Odo,” I reply, “have we known each other so long that you ask me that?”

  “Swear it,” he insists. I hear in his voice what I have not often heard—a little bone and muscle, a little bit of iron. “Swear it on your soul that you will not betray me.”

  “As God is my witness, I swear on my everlasting soul that I will not betray you.”

  This seems to satisfy him; he opens the door to my cell and takes his customary place. I see by the firm set of his soft mouth that he is chewing on something too big to swallow, so I let him take his time with it.

  “It is the abbot,” he says at last.

  “It usually is,” I reply. “What has he done now?”

  “He has been lying to me,” remarks Odo. “Lying from the very beginning. I have caught him time and again, but said nothing.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, Will,” replies my scribe, “you do not. I have been lying to him, too.”

  I stare at him. “Odo, you do amaze me.”

  “That is why I rushed away. If I am to do as you ask, I had to make confession. If I am killed, I want to go to God with clean hands and a clean heart.”

  “As do we all, Odo. But tell me more about this deception.”

  He nods. “I knew you would not give up Bran—not even to save yourself.”

  “Truly, I never would.”

  “When I saw that you were a man of honour, I decided to spin the abbot a tale that would keep us talking, but would tell him little.”

  Astonished at this turn, I do not know what to say. It seems best to just let him talk as he will. “Oh?”

  “That is what I did. Some of what you said, I used, but most I made up.” He shrugs. “It is easy for me. The abbot knows nothing of Mérian, or Iwan, Siarles, or Tuck, and what he knows of Bran is mostly fancy.” He allows himself a sly smile. “The more you told me of the real Bran, the less I told the abbot.”

  “Well, you have me, Odo. I don’t know what to say.”

  B
ut Odo is not listening.

  “Abbot Hugo has been lying to me from the beginning. Nothing he says can be trusted. He thinks I am stupid, that I cannot see through his veil of lies, but I have from the start.” He pauses to draw breath. I can see that he is working himself up to do the thing he has come to do. “Like the letter Bran stole—abbot says it was nothing, a simple letter of introduction only. But if that was true then why was he so desperate to get it back?”

  “And they were that desperate, I can tell you,” I said, recalling the Christmas raid. “A good many men died that night to recover it. I think you can fair be sure it was far more than a letter of introduction.”

  “What you said about treachery against the crown . . .” His voice falls to a creaky whisper. “Knowing the abbot, I do not doubt it. Still, I cannot think what it might be.”

  “Nor could I, Odo, nor could I—not for the longest time,” I tell him. “But the answer was starin’ me in the face all along. Blind dog that I am, I could not see it until you showed me where to look.”

  “I showed you?” he says, and smiles.

  “Oh, aye,” I tell him, and then explain how I tumbled to what the Bloody Baron and Black Abbot were up to at last. He listens, nodding in solemn agreement as I conclude, “Fortunately, we are not without some tricks of our own.”

  “Yes?” He nods and licks his lips, eager now to hear what I propose.

  “But as you made me swear on my solitary soul, so must I hear your pledge, my friend. We are in this together now, and you can tell no one—not even your confessor.” This I tell him in a tone as bleak as the tomb which will certainly claim us both if he fails to keep his vow.

  Odo hesitates; he knows full well the consequence of what I am about to ask him. Then, squaring his round shoulders, he nods.

  “Say it, Odo,” I say gently. “I must hear the words.”

  “On my eternal soul, I will do exactly as you say and breathe a word to no one.”

  “Good lad. You have done the right thing,” I tell him. “It is not easy to go against your superior, but it is the right thing.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he says, as if anxious now to get the deed done.

  “We must get a message to Bran,” I say. “We must let him know what is about to happen so he can move against it.”

  Odo agrees. He unstops the inkhorn and pares his quill. I watch him as he spreads the curled edge of parchment beneath his pudgy hands—I have seen this countless times, yet this time I watch with my heart in my mouth. Do not let us down, monk.

  He dips the pen and holds it poised above the parchment. “What shall I write?”

  “Not so fast,” I say. “It is no use writing in Ffreinc, as no one in Cél Craidd can read it. Can you write in Saxon?”

  “Latin,” he says. “French and Latin.” He shrugs. “That’s all.”

  “Then Latin will have to do,” I say, and we begin.

  In the end, it is a simple message we devise, and when we finish I have him read it back to me to see if we’ve left anything out. “See now, we must think what word to add to let Bran know that this has come from me, and no one else. It must be something Bran will trust.”

  It takes me a moment to think of a word or two—something only Bran and I would know . . . about Tuck, or one of the others? . . . Then it comes to me. “Odo, my fine scribe, at the end of the message add this: ‘The straw man was shaved twice that day: once by error, and once by craft. Will’s the error, Bran’s the craft. Yet Will took the prize.’ This Bran knows to be true.”

  Odo regards me with a curious look.

  “Write it,” I tell him.

  He dips his quill and leans low over the parchment scrap, now all but covered with his tight script. “What does it mean?”

  “It is something known between Bran and myself, that is all.”

  “Very well,” says Odo. He bends to the task and then raises his head. “It is done.”

  “Good,” I say. “Now tuck that up your skirt, priest, and keep it well out of sight.”

  “It is my head if I fail,” he says, and frowns. “But how am I to find Rhi Bran?”

  I smile at his use of the name. “It is more likely that he will find you, I expect. All you have to do is start down the King’s Road, and, if you do what I tell you, he’ll find you soon enough.” I begin to tell him how to attract the attention of the Grellon, but he makes a face and I stop. “Now what?”

  “I am watched day and night,” he points out. “I can’t go wandering around in the forest. The abbot would catch me before I was out of sight of the town.”

  He has a point. “So, then . . .” I stare at him and it comes to me. “Then we will look for someone in town—a Welshman. Despite everything, they must come to the market still.”

  “Sometimes,” Odo allows. “Would you trust a Welshman? Someone from Elfael?”

  “Would and do,” I reply. “All the more if the fella knew it was to serve King Raven and Elfael.”

  “Tomorrow is a market day,” Odo announces, “and with the snows gone now there will likely be traders from Hereford and beyond. That always seems to bring a few of the local folk into town. They don’t stay long, but if I was able to keep close watch, I might entrust the message to someone who could pass it along.”

  Bless me, Mother Mary, there are more things wrong with this plan than right. But in the end, we are left face-to-face with the plain ugly fact that we can do no better. I reluctantly agree, and tell Odo he is a good fella for thinkin’ of it. This small praise seems to hearten him, and he hides the scrap of parchment in his robes and then stands to leave. “I should like to pray before I go, Will,” he says.

  “Another fine idea,” I tell him. “Pray away.”

  Odo bows his head and folds his hands and, standing in the middle of the cell, begins to pray. He prays in Latin, like all priests, and I can follow only a little of it. His soft voice fills the cell like a gentle rain and, if only for a moment, I sense a warming presence—and sweet peace comes over me. For the first time in a long time, I am content.

  CHAPTER 36

  I make it five days since Odo took the message out of the cell. He has not come back, and I fear he has been caught. A weak choice to begin with, true, but if the poor fella’d got even a thimble’s worth o’ luck he might have got a fair chop at it. I guess even that little was too much to hope for.

  No doubt he did his best with the scant handful he was given, but Odo was not born to the outlaw life, like ol’ Will, here. I do not hold him to blame.

  Blame, now. There is a nasty black bog if ever there was one. If I think about it long enough I come ’round to the conclusion that if blame must be spooned out to anyone at all the Good Lord himself must take the swallow for making it so fiendishly easy for the strong and powerful to crush down the weak and powerless. Would that he had foreseen the host of problems arising from that little error. Oh, but that en’t the world we got. I suppose we don’t deserve a better one.

  I close my eyes on that bitter thought and feel myself begin to drift off when . . . what’s this, now? I hear the door open at the far end of the corridor. I guess it is Gulbert bringing me some sour water and the scrag end of a mutton bone to gnaw on.

  I roll over and look up as he comes to my cell and . . . it’s Odo!

  He’s back, but one look at his pasty face and doleful eyes tells me all is not cream and cakes in the abbey.

  “I feared they’d caught you, monk. I reckoned we’d be soon enough sharing this cell. Ah, but look at you now. A face like the one you’re awearin’ could bring clouds to a clear blue sky.”

  “Oh,Will . . . ,” he sighs and his round shoulders slump even further. “I am so sorry.”

  “They found the message,” I guess. “Well, I thought as much. At least they didn’t lock you up.”

  Odo is shaking his head. “It’s not that.”

  “Then?”

  “It’s something else,” he moans, “and it’s bad.”

&nbs
p; “Well, tell me, lad. Ol’ Will is a brave fella; he can take the worst you got to give him.”

  “They’re going to hang you, Will.”

  “That much I know already,” I say, giving him a smile to jolly him along a bit. “If that’s all, then we’re no worse off than before.”

  Odo will not look at me. He stands there drooping like a beaten dog. “It’s today, Will,” he breathes, unable to rise above a whisper.

  “What?”

  “They mean to hang you today.”

  A dozen thoughts spin through my poor head at once, and it fair steals the warm breath from my mouth. “Well, now,” I say when I have hold of myself once more, “that is something new, I do confess.”

  Odo lets loose another sigh and snivels a little. Bless him, he feels that bad for me.

  “Why not tell me what’s happened?” I say, for I would rather hear him talk than dwell on my predicament. “But first, I have to know—did you get the message out? That is the most important thing anyway.”

  He nods. “It was not difficult,” he says, brightening a little as he remembers. “The first Welshman I found was brother to one of those the sheriff meant to hang on Twelfth Night. He was only too happy to take the message for you.” The ghost of a smile brushes his lips. “The farmer said we were not to worry. He said he’d get the message to Rhi Bran without fail.”

  “Good,” I say, feeling a little of my ruffled peace returning. “All is well then.” Another thought occurs to me. “But that was five days ago, as I make it. Why did you not come to tell me sooner?”

  “The abbot has returned and said I could not come here anymore. But the day before yesterday some important visitors arrived, and the whole town has gone giddy. Everyone is busy preparing a special reception and feast.”