Isle of Glass (25 page)

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 always 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.”

“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. “Nor 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.”

“I would rather go with you, Sire.”

“You’d rather I didn’t go at all.” Richard drained his cup
and retrieved the crown from Alf’s lap. “When I get back I’ll have another of
these for you to play with.”

“You’ll have a wound that will drain your life away, and two
kingdoms in revolt, and the Flame-bearer ravaging your coasts.”

Alf’s eyes were blurred, unfocused, his voice too soft to be
so clear. The King shivered with a sudden chill. Yet he spoke lightly. “So.
You’re a prophet, too.”

“No. I see the patterns, that is all.”

“My pattern has two crowns in it and Jerusalem at the end of
it.”

“Two hundred years ago,” said Alf, “there was a very learned
man who rose to the Papacy. He had been promised that he would not die until he
had seen Jerusalem. Being a clever man, he decided to live forever, for he
would never leave Rome. But one day he fell dead upon the steps of a church
within sight of his palace. The name of the church was Jerusalem.”

“I should put you in a bottle like the old Sibyl, and never
uncork you.”

Alf smiled faintly, set his untouched cup aside, and rose.

“You’re not supposed to get up until tomorrow,” the King
said.

“Really?” Alf asked. “I walked to St. Benedict’s this
morning to see Brother Adam, who was my questioner. I’ve shaken his faith very
badly; I wanted to give him what comfort I could.” He sighed and took up his
tunic. “I didn’t give him much.”

“Was there ever anyone like you?” the King demanded of him.

Carefully Alf drew on the tunic, and then the cotte. As he
fastened the belt he said, “If you're leaving tomorrow, I’d best get all your
letters done today. There must be a week’s worth to do.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Get back into bed and stay
there.”

“Not to mention your mother’s letter, which you’ve put off
answering. And the matter of the estate in Poitou—”

“Alfred.”

“Yes, Sire?”

“Go to bed.”

“Saving your grace, Sire,” Alf said, “no. I suppose my
writing case is still in the solar?”

Richard snarled in exasperation and let him go.

o0o

Alf set down his pen. He had finished his third letter, and
he was more weary than he cared to admit.

He looked about the solar. The King conversed quietly with
one or two of his knights, considering matters of the war. The usual complement
of servitors moved about or stood at attention.

No one glanced at the clerk in his corner, although there
had been stares enough when first he came. He had disappointed them by seeming
the same as ever but for his hollowed cheeks and his secular dress, and by
settling quietly into his old task of writing letters for the King. They had
expected more of one charged with witchcraft and proven a saint.

He reached for a new sheet of parchment. His back twinged;
his half-smile turned to a grimace. He moved more carefully to sharpen his worn
quill.

A disturbance drew his eyes to the door. The guard within
conferred with the guard without and turned. “Sire!” he called out. “Owein of
Llanfair, courier of the King of Gwynedd, asks grace to converse with Your
Majesty.”