Isle of Glass (19 page)

Iron grated on iron. The door opened.

Alf raised his head. Reynaud smiled at him. “Awake at last,
Brother? How do you feel?”

“Betrayed,” Alf said.

He winced. The blow to his head had shattered his inner
defenses; he could not shield against the other’s anger.

Reynaud smiled through clenched teeth. “Do you think I
betrayed you?”

“Is the price still thirty pieces of silver?”

“That,” said Reynaud, “could be construed as blasphemy.”

Alf swallowed bile. “I take a walk with you out of courtesy
and face an ambush. And when I wake I’m in chains. Is this how you demonstrate
your friendship?”

It was some comfort to see Reynaud look uneasy. Yet
righteousness flooded over the seeds of his guilt and drowned them. “I did as I
was commanded.”

“By whom? The Sanhedrin?”

Reynaud’s hand flashed out. Alf darted away, but the blow
caught him sidewise. His ears rang; his stomach heaved. Reynaud’s anger turned
to disgust, and then to dismay. A firm yet gentle presence ministered to Alf,
while a quiet voice said, “Go to my cell, Reynaud. I will come to you later.”

The Pauline monk was gone. The other held Alf until he had
recovered somewhat, cleaned him and dressed him in a fresh habit, a black one.
“Your pardon, Brother,” the man said, “but we have only Benedictine robes
here.”

Yet he wore Pauline white and grey: a tall thin man with the
face of a Byzantine saint. His face was smooth, his skin as fresh as a boy’s,
but his hair was white; Alf sensed a great weight of years upon him.

He followed Alf’s glance to his habit, and smiled. “And
Pauline,” he amended. “But I thought you would not want those.”

“Nor would you,” Alf said.

His smile faded. “Say rather, it would not be proper.”

“No. The captive should not assume the garb of his captors.”

“You speak wisely and well, young Brother. Though somewhat
bitterly.”

“You think I should not be bitter?”

The monk shrugged slightly. “I can understand, though not
condone it.”

“If our positions should ever be reversed, I’d like to hear
you repeat that.”

The monk’s smile returned. “Perhaps I may not. I am human,
after all.” He paused; seemed to remember a thing he had forgotten; said, “My
name is Brother Adam.”

“You know mine.”

“Do I?”

Alf sighed. “Ah. So the game begins. I'm called Alfred.”

“Or Alf?”

“That, too,” he admitted. “Reynaud has kept you well informed.
He’s not going to welcome the need to treat me gently.”

“You heard?”

Alf began to nod, decided against it. “Yes,” he said. “I
heard.”

Brother Adam smiled again, wryly. “I see that I shall have
to watch you more carefully.”

“Reynaud was not happy. But he did try to obey you, until I
provoked him. Don’t be too harsh with him.”

“And why did you provoke him?” Brother Adam asked,
interested.

“I was angry. Inexcusably, but understandably. No one
welcomes betrayal.”

“Ah,” said Brother Adam, “but if he had told you what he
meant to do, then you would not have come.”

“Maybe I would have,” Alf said.

“Even into chains?”

Alf shook one. “They aren’t pleasant,” he said. “If I
promised to behave, would you let me out of them?”

Adam’s eyes were sad. “No, Brother. I would not. Certain
sufferings are necessary, you see; those I cannot spare you.”

“At whose orders? Why am I a prisoner?”

“Two questions,” said Brother Adam. “Perhaps you know the
answers to both.”

Alf sat up. His head throbbed, but he would not lie still.
“You have me, and this habit is Benedictine. Is this Bishop Foulques’s doing?
Is he holding me for ransom?”

“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.

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 slowly 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.