Tower of Thorns

  I’m looking across at the infirmary, thinking of Flannan in there reading that manuscript. Maybe finding the answers to the puzzle right now. If I was a different man I’d go and knock on the door, ask to have a look, ask to hear the news right away so I could run back and tell Blackthorn. If I was a different man I’d be sitting in the refectory enjoying a hot brew instead of shivering out here. Wind’s howling now, odd sound, like voices. Loud enough to drown out the monster. If I was a different man I’d maybe have a corner of my own here.

  It comes crowding back, catching me by surprise. The blood, the screams, the suddenness of it, no time to make a plan, nothing. Heart beating like a big drum. Men coming from everywhere, men with axes and clubs and knives. Yelling, shouting, can’t understand the words but no need for that; they’re saying, Death! Monks running, trying to get away, trying to protect each other, falling. Can’t be everywhere. Mochta falls, Padraic falls, Ronchu’s head goes flying, blood spurts from what’s left of him. A weapon, need a weapon—Ah! The iron bar from the scriptorium door. Wrench it off. Want to rush out and fight all of them at once. My brothers are screaming, praying, dying. Go out there and I’m dead too, in an instant. Here, I can do some good.

  Stand in the doorway, both hands gripping the iron bar, smashing one way, the other way. I fell one man, two men, three, more, more, and all the time, out in the courtyard, the brothers are falling, falling in their blood. Behind me the scriptorium door. In there the scholars, Brother Galen, the books, the precious books. Someone praying like his chest’s on fire, like sobbing, the words over and over, hear them in my head now, Deus, Deus meus, respice in me: quare me dereliquisti? But God’s not answering. Nobody is. The words break up and fall apart. The sound of men dying. Me shouting in time with the blows, No! No! No! Swing the iron bar, break an arm, break a head, put out a fellow’s eye, and then I’m hit and I’m down and it all goes to black.

  “Brother Conall?”

  Christ! I whirl around, thatching knife in my hand, knees bent, ready to strike. There’s a heartbeat in it. In front of me, a stride away, two monks with faces the color of fresh cheese and their hands up, palms toward me. One’s Brother Fergal. The other one’s Brother Ríordán, the head archivist.

  I suck in a breath. It hurts. Can’t seem to move.

  “Grim,” says Fergal in a voice like sun on an herb patch. “For the love of God, put the knife away.”

  I fumble it back into my belt. Can’t find words.

  “You’re safe here,” Fergal says. “You’re among friends.”

  “Can’t . . .” I gasp. “Tried . . . They wouldn’t stop . . .” Take another breath. Make myself straighten up. Aching all over. Then it sinks in; what Brother Ríordán just called me. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I’ll go now. Take myself off. Sorry the job isn’t finished.” I turn my back and head for the gate, walking first, then jogging, then running so fast I slip and skid in the puddles, and the rain’s all over me, soaking my clothes, dribbling down my face, only that’s tears too, tears for what I didn’t do, tears for what I lost, tears of guilt for keeping quiet about who I really am, tears because it looks as if these fellows know anyway and that makes me an outcast all over again. Tears for the creatures I was going to put on the roof, dove, salmon, raven, cat, that now won’t get made anymore. Means the job’s not properly done, and I like it properly done . . .

  Make it halfway to the gate, more or less. Someone calling behind me, “Grim! Stop!” I slip and fall, sprawl flat in the mud, rain falling, can’t make myself get up. Head on my arms, lying there like a fool, big lump of a man all tears. Sobbing, sobbing, can’t seem to stop. Why won’t it all go away? Why can’t someone take it away?

  The two brothers are here, crouching down in the rain, one on each side. Feel a hand on my shoulder. Under the roar of the rain, Brother Fergal’s voice. “We’ve known who you were since early on, Grim. We sent a bird south to confirm it. Come inside; let’s get you to shelter.”

  But I can’t move, can’t stop crying, like that thing in the tower. Sorrow’s rolled on top of me, won’t let me up, won’t let me out. I try to say something, comes out as just noise.

  Then the archivist speaks, Brother Ríordán, the fellow with the cold face. “The lost hero of St. Erc’s,” he says. “That’s what they call you. Nobody knew where you went.”

  “Until now,” puts in Brother Fergal. “Help me here, Grim. You’re on the big side to tuck under my arm and carry. The vegetables love this weather. I am not quite so enthusiastic. We have a pot of soup on the boil inside, and dry clothes. Please, come out of the wet.”

  I’m mumbling about vegetables and compost and when I get up on all fours I try to crawl to the gate in the mud. When Fergal helps me stand up I pull away from him. But I don’t run. Feeling wobbly, not right in the head. Don’t think I can get far without fainting. Big fellow like me. All I can think now is that I just waved a thatching knife at them, and they stayed with me and helped me. Doing what that fellow in the story did, the Good Samaritan. Doing what Jesus would have done. If he was real.

  “Come,” says Fergal again. Now I’ve got one holding my left arm and one holding my right, not like guards, like friends. Leading me toward the refectory.

  “Can’t.” I stop in my tracks like a stubborn donkey. “Can’t go in.” The blood. The brains. The broken men.

  “Then we will sit on the doorstep.” Brother Ríordán’s got the sort of voice that’s good for giving orders. The kind you can’t help listening to.

  “You’ll be wanting me to go,” I say, but I’m walking again, between the two of them. Through the rain, the sound of bells. “You’ll be wanting to sing Sext.” Then something he said sinks in. The lost hero of St. Erc’s. “Hero,” I say. “Someone else. Not me. Didn’t save anyone. Not one. Even the cat was dead. Even the pigeons. Nothing left. Like a battlefield. Only not warriors. Men of peace. After that, couldn’t believe in God. If God was real, he’d have been there.” And we’re at the refectory. Covered area outside, benches set along the wall. Nice for the brothers to sit out on sunny days. Today, cold, wet and not where you’d want to be.

  I sit down anyway. Legs don’t want to carry me one more step. Sit there and watch my clothes dripping onto the paving stones, making a pool around my feet. Think of blood pooling under Brother Galen’s head, his snowy hair turned sticky red. Hero, me? Not likely. Anyway, who was there to see anything? Nobody.

  The fellows go inside for a bit; then Brother Ríordán’s back, standing next to me. “It helps, sometimes, to take things one step at a time,” he says. “It’s cold, you’re wet through and you need to change your clothes. Do it out here and you’ll get even colder. Or take one step inside and you’ll be in a small chamber where you can put on these dry garments and wrap a blanket around your shoulders.” When I start to say I can’t, he goes on. “I don’t suppose it will help if I suggest you hand your burden over to God. Not at this moment. But the first step toward lightening the load is to take control. This is your first step.”

  “Why would you want me here?” I say, not understanding. “Why don’t you throw me out, after what happened?”

  “Come in,” he says, as if I haven’t said a word. “Come and warm yourself. Time for talk when you’ve got dry and had a bite to eat. There’s nobody else in the refectory; they’ve all gone to the chapel. Just me and Brother Fergal, and he is the gentlest of souls.”

  I take the step. Shivering, and not only from cold. I’m inside. Fergal helps me take off my wet things, put on a shirt and trousers, bit small but not bad. Blanket on top. Feels good. I was colder than I knew. Remember Blackthorn suddenly. What about her, if I’d wandered off and got led astray and died of cold?

  Warm and dry. But trembling head to toe. If I can take the first step, the second might not be so hard. Into the refectory. Fire burning on a hearth. Long tables with benches. Clanking and clinking next door, that’ll be the kitchen.
I sit down. Ríordán sits next to me. Fergal’s taking my wet things out, talking to someone, but nobody else comes in.

  I’m thinking, what can I say? I’m thinking, what’s he going to say? Holding myself together by a thread, but I’m here; I’m inside; I’m working hard not to see them lying in their blood, and everything ruined.

  “Brother Galen was my mentor,” says Ríordán. “He taught me everything I know. I completed my novitiate at St. Erc’s. Before your time, Brother Conall.”

  Stray tear dribbles down. Can’t speak for a bit. Then I ask, “How . . . ?” All I can get out.

  “After I came to St. Olcan’s, he and I corresponded for some years. Galen always loved to write. You’d know that. To write and to draw. He was fond of you. Said you had a great deal to give.”

  Now I’m crying again. Different sort of tears. Don’t wipe them away. Feels like I should let them fall. “But how . . . ?”

  “How did we know who you were? No great mystery. Galen described you, a giant of a man with a gentle manner, who could turn his hand to anything around the place. Building, thatching, painting. A man who loved stories. A man who would listen for hours as he read from the scripture or told tales of magic and wonder. A man who was kind to animals. A man who generally kept himself to himself, until he was sure he could trust. He mentioned the creatures you put up on the roof, after you’d finished thatching. Fergal told me you’d spoken of doing the same here.”

  Fergal’s back with a tray. Cups of mulled ale. Bread, butter. Smells good. Not sure if I can eat, though. “Dove, salmon, raven, cat,” I mumble, then clear my throat. They’re being kind. They deserve better. “Still do it if you want. Four days left. Got time, if the rain stops.”

  “Grim,” says Ríordán. “Drink.” He puts a cup in my hands, like you’d do with a two-year-old. “One sip, come on.”

  I drink. Had mulled ale before, but nothing like this. Warm, tasty, spices go right to my head. Need to drink slow.

  “Eat,” says Fergal. He breaks up bread, spreads butter, passes me a platter.

  I do as I’m told. Manage to get a bite or two down.

  “Tell me why you chose those particular animals,” says Ríordán, as if none of the rest of it’s happened. “Dove, salmon, raven and cat.”

  I go through it for him. “In that story, the one about the great flood, Noah sent ravens and then a dove. Raven’s for clear eyes; suits a house of scholars. Dove for peace. Salmon for wisdom. Not book learning, but the kind that’s in the bones of the land. A fish, that’s a Christian thing. A sign.”

  “And the cat?” asks Ríordán.

  Feel my mouth twist. Tears close again. “Bathsheba,” I say. “For Brother Galen. He loved her like a child.” Manage to say his name. Long breath in; long breath out. Feels like climbing a mountain. “Used to sit right next to him when he was writing. Watching the quill move, one way, the other way. Wanting to stick out a paw and bat at it, but not doing it. Purring deep down.”

  Nobody says anything for a bit. I eat and drink some more. The two of them do the same. Voices outside but nobody comes in.

  “You said you were no hero,” Ríordán says after a while. “That’s not how other folk understood it. What they saw was a man who fought hard to save his friends. Fought on and on against impossible odds, until he in his turn was cut down. A man who gave everything he had to give.”

  Something wrong with this tale. “Nobody saw,” I tell him, the scene clear in my mind, coming to and finding them all dead. Every single one. The place as still as the grave, but for the scrabbling sounds of those hurt pigeons, poor little sods. “Nobody there, after. Only me.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Away. Couldn’t live with what I’d done. Couldn’t face up to it. Got into trouble, on and off. Lost my way. Like that sheep, the one who strayed from the path. Only Jesus didn’t find me and lead me back. Why not? Because the day the raiders came, I stopped believing he could.”

  “And now? Here you are, back among us.”

  “Only chance. Found Blackthorn. Got a reason to go on now. She needs me. And this, the thatching . . . Hard to come up here. Kept seeing them. All the time. But she wanted me to do it.”

  Silence again for a while. “You’re wrong about that day, Brother Conall,” says Ríordán, quiet-like. “Someone did see. One of the lay helpers, hiding up in the tower, knowing if he came out he’d be slaughtered along with the others. He stayed up there a long time, too frightened to come down. It was only after folk from the local village arrived that he emerged to tell the remarkable tale of how you stood up to a band of thirty armed raiders, and kept them out of the scriptorium until, at long last, you were overcome and collapsed. Dead, he thought; but by the time he came down from the tower, you were gone. Gone before anyone could thank you. Gone before anyone could acknowledge your remarkable courage. They found Brother Galen laid out with his hands crossed on his breast, and Bathsheba beside him, wrapped in a man’s shirt. A torn fragment of manuscript in his fingers.”

  “They took his book. His beautiful book with all the little pictures. Not even for reading, only for the cover. I loved that book. He put his soul in it. You know what the Norsemen do? Just toss the pages on the fire.”

  “His soul is in Heaven now,” says Fergal.

  I say nothing. I may not believe in God anymore, but I can’t believe a good soul like Brother Galen’s could go anywhere else, unless it’s to be a lark singing high in a perfect sky or something of that kind.

  “That’s what it is to be a hero,” Ríordán says. “It’s fighting on even when you’re hopelessly outnumbered. It’s seeing your friends dying all around you, witnessing the most shocking cruelty you could imagine, and still finding the courage to go on. It’s doing the very best you can.”

  “Didn’t feel that way,” I say, but his words are some comfort. Someone was there. I wasn’t alone, not quite. “Felt like defeat. Felt like failure.”

  “And you’ve borne it on your shoulders ever since,” says Fergal.

  That’s the truth. Funny thing, though. The burden feels a bit lighter now.

  We finish the bread and butter. Drink a second cup of mulled ale each. I’m warming up at last. Can feel my feet. Outside, it sounds as if the worst of the rain might be over. Be a muddy old walk back.

  Still a lot of questions to ask. So many I don’t know where to start. Think about Blackthorn, not myself. “Who else knows?” I ask. “Who I am and where I came from, I mean.” Even Blackthorn doesn’t know that story. Hadn’t planned on telling her. Or anyone.

  “You mean here at St. Olcan’s? Very few. The two of us. Father Tomas. Brother Eoan who looks after the pigeons. I believe that’s all.” Ríordán looks at Fergal.

  “We thought it best kept to a small number,” Fergal says, “since it was plain you did not want to share it. We knew the story of St. Erc’s, of course; it was one of the cruelest raids.”

  “Does Flannan know about me?” If he does, then Blackthorn’s going to find out soon enough. Don’t want anyone else telling her the story. Only me.

  “Master Flannan?” Ríordán half smiles. “We would not share your story outside our own brotherhood, Conall. Besides, Flannan has been so absorbed in his work that I doubt he would have taken in the tale even if we had told it. He seems a man on a mission, blind to all else.”

  Never seemed like that to me. But I’m guessing they mean this translation Flannan’s doing. True, I’ve hardly seen him since he got started on it, so maybe he’s putting in long hours. And he was a bit odd when he crossed my path yesterday. “Thank you,” I say. “For not spreading it around. I’ll tell Blackthorn in my own time. Not anyone else. And best if you don’t call me Conall. That name’s gone. Done.”

  They look at each other. Fergal pours more ale. “As to that,” says Ríordán, “it might not be gone and done. Not unless that’s what you want.
You could resume your novitiate here. Father Tomas has said so. Not only because your practical skills would be a great asset to our community, but because we believe you have all the qualities required. We would welcome you as one of us, Grim.”

  I’m gob-smacked. This is too much. A second chance, a home, a community, the stories, the pictures, the singing . . . All that I lost, given back so easily. “I’d bring down ill luck,” I say. “Be a blight on you, like that sad creature in the tower. Soon as you let me in, soon as I get comfortable, something bad will happen. Always does.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” Ríordán says. “How could you be in any way responsible for the raid on St. Erc’s? Nobody in his right mind would have expected one man, however big and strong, however remarkably brave, to fight off thirty armed Norsemen.”

  Maybe nobody expected that. Thing is, though, I expected it. Or that I’d go on fighting until someone killed me. Should have died protecting them. Then I’d have done my best. But I’m here, and they’re dead.

  “What would Brother Galen want you to do?” asks Ríordán.

  Big question. Too big to answer. To Brother Galen I was good. Whole. No missing parts, no wrong parts, no bad parts. He taught me to love learning. If I told Brother Galen I didn’t believe in God anymore, he wouldn’t be shocked. He’d talk through it, listen to what I had to say, offer his own ideas. While we talked he’d paint his little pictures, so magical. Something about those pictures . . .

  “He’d want me to do what felt right,” I say. “Inside, I mean. Deep down. Got a question for you.” Man with the head of a bear. Creature like a cat in a snail shell, sticking out its tongue. Row of horses in hats, kicking up their feet. “You know the little pictures scribes put in manuscripts? Sometimes angels, folk praying, chapel bells. But sometimes odd things. Old things. Strange creatures, maybe fey folk. Brother Galen put lots of those in. Don’t know if the fellows here do that too. Just thinking, where do they get the ideas for those?”