“Thank you,” Philin said gravely. “But tell me…” These last three words checked Thomas who had turned to lead the horses back to the rocks. “Tell me, Englishman, why you are here? Alone?”
“I thought you knew everything that happened between Berat and the mountains?”
“I know by asking questions,” Philin said, stooping to his son.
“I’m a landless man, Philin, a fugitive. Accused of a crime I did commit.”
“What crime?”
“Giving refuge to a heretic.”
Philin shrugged as if to suggest that crime ranked very low in the hierarchy of evils that had driven the coredors to outlawry. “If you are truly a fugitive,” he said, “you should think of joining us. But look after your woman. I did not lie. She is wounded.”
He was right. Thomas took the horses back to the rocks and he called Genevieve’s name and when she did not answer he climbed up to the gully and found her with a crossbow bolt in her left shoulder. It had pierced the silver mail and shattered a rib just above her left breast, close to the armpit, and she was lying there, surrounded by the ugly black quarrels, breathing shallowly, her face paler than ever and she cried out when Thomas lifted her. “I’m dying,” she said, but there was no blood in her mouth and Thomas had seen many others live after such wounds. He had seen them die too.
He gave her a lot of pain as he carried her down the rocks, but once at the foot she found some small strength to help herself as Thomas lifted her into the saddle. Blood ran down her mail, trickling between the rings. She slouched there, eyes dull, and the coredors came close to stare at her in wonderment. They stared at Thomas too, and made the sign of the cross as they looked at the big bow. They were all thin men, victims of the region’s poor harvests and of the difficulty of finding food when they were fugitives, but now that Philin had ordered them to put up their weapons, they were not threatening. They were, instead, pathetic. Philin spoke to them in the local language and then, with his son mounted on one of the scrawny horses with which the coredors had pursued Thomas and Genevieve, he started down the hill towards Astarac.
Thomas went with him, leading Genevieve’s horse. The blood had clotted on the mare’s haunch and, though she walked stiffly, she did not seem badly injured and Thomas had left the bolt in her flesh. He would deal with it later. “Are you their leader?” he asked Philin.
“Only of the men you saw,” the big man said, “and maybe no longer.”
“No longer?”
“The coredors like success,” Philin said, “and they don’t like burying their dead. No doubt there are others who think they can do better than me.”
“What about those other injured men?” Thomas asked, jerking his head back up the hill. “Why aren’t they going to the abbey?”
“One didn’t want to, he’d rather go back to his woman, and the others? They’ll probably die.” Philin looked at Thomas’s bow. “And some of them refuse to go down to the abbey; they think they’ll be betrayed and captured. But Planchard will not betray me.”
Genevieve was swaying in her saddle so that Thomas had to ride close alongside to give her support. She said nothing. Her eyes were still dull, her skin pale and her breathing almost undetectable, but she gripped the pommel firmly enough and Thomas knew there was still some life in her. “The monks may not treat her,” he said to Philin.
“Planchard takes everyone,” Philin said, “even heretics.”
“Planchard is the abbot here, yes?”
“He is,” Philin confirmed, “and also a good man. I was one of his monks once.”
“You?” Thomas could not hide his surprise.
“I was a novice, but I met a girl. We were staking out a new vineyard and she brought the willow slips to tie the vines and.” Philin shrugged as if the rest of the tale was too familiar to bear repetition. “I was young,” he finished instead, “and so was she.”
“Galdric’s mother?” Thomas guessed.
Philin nodded. “She’s dead now. The abbot was kind enough. He told me I had no vocation and let me go. We became the abbey’s tenants, just a small farm, but the other villagers didn’t like me. Her family had wanted her to marry someone else, they said I was no good for anything and after she died they came to burn me out. I killed one of them with a hoe and they said I had started the fight and branded me a murderer, so here I am. It was either this or be hanged in Berat.” He led his son’s horse across a small stream that tumbled from the hill. “It’s the wheel of fortune, isn’t it? Round and round, up and down, but I seem to be down more than up. And Destral will blame me.”
“Destral?”
“Our leader. His name means ‘axe,’ and that’s what he kills with.”
“He’s not here?”
“He sent me to see what was happening in Astarac,” Philin said. “There were men in the old castle, digging. Destral thinks there’s treasure there.”
The Grail, Thomas thought, the Grail, and he wondered if it had already been found, then dismissed the thought for surely that news would have gone through the countryside like lightning.
“But we never reached Astarac,” Philin went on. “We camped in the woods and were just about to leave when we saw you instead.”
“And thought you’d become rich?”
“We would have got forty coins for you,” Philin said, “all of them gold.”
“Ten more than Judas got,” Thomas said lightly, “and his were only silver.” Philin had the grace to smile.
They reached the monastery just after midday. The wind was cold, gusting from the north and blowing the kitchen smoke above the gateway where two monks accosted them. They nodded to Philin, allowing him to take his son to the infirmary, but then barred Thomas’s path. “She needs help,” Thomas insisted angrily.
“She is a woman,” one of the monks said, “she cannot enter here.”
“There is a place in the back,” the other monk said and, pulling his white hood over his head, he led Thomas around the side of the buildings and through some olive trees to where a cluster of wooden huts was surrounded by a high fence of palings. “Brother Clement will receive you,” the monk said, then hurried away.
Thomas tied the two horses to an olive tree, then carried Genevieve to the gate in the fence. He kicked it with his boot, waited and kicked again, and after the second kick the gate creaked open and a small, white-robed monk with a wrinkled face and a straggling beard smiled up at him.
“Brother Clement?”
The monk nodded.
“She needs help,” Thomas said.
Clement just gestured inside and Thomas carried Genevieve into what he at first took to be a farmyard. It smelt like one, though he could see no dungheap, but the thatched buildings looked like small barns and stables, then he noticed the gray-robed people sitting in doorways. They stared at him hungrily, and others came to the small windows when the news of his arrival spread. His immediate impression was that they were monks, then he saw there were women among the robed figures and he looked back to the gate where a small table was piled with wooden clappers. They were pieces of wood attached to a handle by a strip of leather and, if the handle was shaken, the wooden flaps would make a loud noise. He had noticed them when Brother Clement beckoned him inside, but now the strange objects made sense. The clappers were carried by lepers to warn folk of their approach and the table was set so that anyone from this compound going into the wider world could take one. Thomas checked, frightened. “Is this a lazar house?” he asked Brother Clement.
The monk nodded cheerfully, then plucked at Thomas’s elbow. Thomas resisted, fearing the dreadful contagion of the gray-robed lepers, but Brother Clement insisted and pulled him to a small hut to one side of the yard. The hut was empty except for a straw mattress in one corner and a table on which jars, pestles and an iron balance stood. Brother Clement gestured at the mattress.
Thomas laid Genevieve down. A dozen of the lepers crowded at the doorway and gaped at the newcomers until Broth
er Clement shooed them away. Genevieve, oblivious of the stir her arrival had caused, sighed, then blinked at Thomas. “It hurts,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, “but you must be brave.”
Brother Clement had rolled up his sleeves and now he gestured that Genevieve’s mail coat must be taken off. That would be hard for the crossbow quarrel was still in her flesh and was jutting through the polished mail. But the monk seemed to know what to do for he pushed Thomas aside and first moved Genevieve’s arms so they were reaching above her head, then he took hold of the quarrel’s leather vanes. Genevieve moaned, then Brother Clement, with extraordinary delicacy, eased the bloody and broken mail and the leather jerkin that supported it clear up over the bolt. Then he reached down with his left hand and put it under the jerkin’s skirt, right up until he was holding the bolt and his left arm was supporting the armor to keep it from touching the quarrel and he nodded at Thomas, looked expectant, then jerked his head as if to suggest that Thomas should simply pull Genevieve out of the mail coat. The monk nodded approvingly as Thomas took hold of her ankles, then nodded encouragement.
Thomas shut his eyes and pulled. Genevieve screamed. He stopped pulling and Brother Clement made some guttural noises that suggested Thomas was being squeamish and so he pulled again, sliding her out of the mail, and when he opened his eyes he saw that her body was clear of the iron rings, though her outstretched arms and head were still encased by their folds. But the bolt was clear of the armor and Brother Clement, making clucking noises, eased the mail coat from her arms and tossed it aside.
The monk went back to the table while Genevieve cried aloud and turned her head from side to side in an effort to quell the pain of the wound that had started to bleed again. Her linen shirt was red from armpit to waist.
Brother Clement knelt by her. He put a water-soaked pad on her forehead, patted her cheek, made some more clucking noises that seemed to soothe Genevieve and then, still smiling, he put his left knee on her breast, both hands on the quarrel and pulled. She screamed, but the bolt came out, bloody and dripping, and Brother Clement had a knife with which he slashed the linen to reveal the wound onto which he dropped the wet pad. He motioned that Thomas should hold it in place.
Thomas did while the monk busied himself at the table. He came back with a lump of moldy bread that he had softened in water. He put it on the wound, then pressed it down hard. He gave Thomas a strip of sacking and mimed that it should be wrapped about Genevieve’s chest like a bandage. It hurt her, for Thomas had to sit her up to do it, and once she was upright Brother Clement cut away the rest of her bloodied linen shift, then Thomas wrapped the sacking about her breasts and shoulder, and only when the moldy, blood-soaked poultice was strapped tight was she allowed to rest. Brother Clement smiled as if to say that it was all well done, then he closed his hands prayerfully and put them beside his face to suggest that Genevieve should sleep.
“Thank you,” Thomas said.
Brother Clement opened his mouth in a big smile and Thomas saw the monk had no tongue. A rat rustled in the thatch and the small monk seized a triple-pronged eel spear and began jabbing violently at the straw which only succeeded in tearing great holes in the roof.
Genevieve slept.
Brother Clement went to see to his lepers’ needs, then came back with a brazier and a clay pot in which he had some embers. He lit a bundle of tinder in the brazier, fed the fire with wood and, when it was smoking and red hot, he shoved the quarrel that had wounded Genevieve into the glowing heart of the fire. The leather vanes scorched and stank. Brother Clement nodded happily and Thomas understood that the little monk was curing her wound by punishing the thing that had caused it. Then, when the offending quarrel had been punished by fire, Brother Clement tiptoed to Genevieve’s side, peered at her and smiled happily. He pulled two dirty blankets from under the table and Thomas spread them over her.
He left her sleeping. He had to water the horses, let them graze and then stable them in the monastery’s wine press. He hoped to see Abbot Planchard, but the monks were at prayer and they were still in the abbey church after Thomas, imitating Brother Clement, had made the mare scream by jerking the quarrel from her haunch. He had to step smartly back to avoid her lashing rear hooves. When she had settled he soaked the wound in water, patted her neck, then carried the saddles, bridles, arrows, bows and bags to the shed where Genevieve was now awake. She lay propped against a sack and Brother Clement, making his little clucking noises, was feeding her a soup of mushrooms and sorrel. He gave Thomas a happy smile, then tipped his head towards the yard from where came the sound of singing. It was the lepers, and Brother Clement hummed along with their tune.
There was more soup and bread for Thomas. After he had eaten, and when Brother Clement had gone to wherever he spent his nights, Thomas lay beside Genevieve. “It still hurts,” she said, “but not like it did.”
“That’s good.”
“It didn’t hurt when the arrow hit. It was just like getting a punch.”
“You’ll get better,” he said fervently.
“Do you know what they were singing?” she asked.
“No.”
“The song of Herric and Alloise. They were lovers. A very long time ago.” She reached up and traced a finger down the long unshaven line of his jaw. “Thank you,” she said.
After a while she slept again. Small shafts of moonlight came through the ragged thatch and Thomas could see sweat on her forehead. But at least she was breathing more deeply and, after a time, Thomas fell asleep.
He slept badly. Sometimes in the night he dreamed of horses’ hooves and of men shouting and he woke to find it was no dream, but real, and he sat up as the monastery’s bell began to toll the alarm. He pushed off the blankets, thinking he should go to see what had caused the disturbance, but then the bell stopped its clamor and the night became quiet again.
And Thomas slept once more.
THOMAS WOKE WITH A START, realizing there was a man standing above him. It was a tall man, his looming height outlined against the pale light of dawn showing in the hut doorway. Thomas instinctively twisted away and reached for his sword, but the man stepped back and made a hushing sound. “I did not mean to wake you,” he said softly in a voice that was deep and held no threat.
Thomas sat up to see it was a monk who had spoken. He could not see the monk’s face for it was dark in the hut, but then the tall, white-robed man stepped forward again to peer at Genevieve. “How is your friend?” he asked.
Genevieve was sleeping. A strand of golden hair shivered at her mouth with every breath. “She was feeling better last night,” Thomas said softly.
“That’s good,” the monk said fervently, then stepped back again to the doorway. He had picked up Thomas’s bow as he stooped to look at Genevieve and now he examined the bow in the thin grey light. Thomas, as ever, felt uncomfortable when a stranger handled the weapon, but he said nothing and, after a while, the monk propped the bow against Brother Clement’s medicine table. “I would like to talk with you,” the monk said. “Shall we meet in the cloisters in a few moments?”
It was a cold morning. A dew lay on the grass between the olive trees and on the lawn in the cloister’s center. There was a circular communal trough at one corner of the cloisters where the monks, with one prayer service already behind them, splashed their faces and hands, and Thomas first looked for the tall monk among the washing men, but then saw him sitting on a low wall between two pillars of the southern arcade. The monk gestured to him and Thomas saw that he was very old, with a face deeply lined and somehow full of kindness. “Your friend,” the old monk said when Thomas joined him, “is in excellent hands. Brother Clement is a most skilled healer, but he and Brother Ramon don’t agree about things, so I have to keep them apart. Ramon looks after the infirmary and Clement tends the lepers. Ramon is a proper physician, trained at Montpellier, so of course we have to defer to him, but he seems to have no remedies other than prayer and copious bleeding. He us
es them for every ailment, while Brother Clement, I suspect, uses his own kind of magic. I should probably disapprove of that, but I am forced to say that if I was sick I would prefer Brother Clement to treat me.” He smiled at Thomas. “My name is Planchard.”
“The abbot?”
“Indeed. And you are most welcome to our house. I am sorry I could not greet you yesterday. And Brother Clement tells me you were alarmed at being in the lazar house? There’s no need. My experience is that the condition is not promoted by contact with others. I have been visiting the lepers for forty years and have yet to lose a finger, and Brother Clement lives and worships with them and he has never been touched by the disease.” The abbot paused and made the sign of the cross and Thomas at first thought the old man was warding off the evil thought of catching leprosy, then he saw that Planchard was looking at something across the cloister. He followed the Abbot’s gaze and saw a body being carried on a stretcher. It was obviously a corpse for the face was covered with a white cloth and there was a crucifix balanced on the chest which fell off after a few steps so that the monks had to stop and retrieve it. “We had excitement here last night,” Planchard said mildly.
“Excitement?”
“You probably heard the bell? It was rung too late, I fear. Two men came to the monastery after dark. Our gate is never shut, so they had no trouble entering. They tied the gatekeeper hand and foot, then went to the infirmary. The Count of Berat was there. He was attended by his squire and three of his men-at-arms who had survived a horrid little fight in the next valley,” the Abbot waved a hand towards the west, but if he knew or suspected that Thomas had been involved in that fight, he made no comment, “and one of the men-at-arms was sleeping in the Count’s chamber. He woke up when the killers came, and so he died and then the Count’s throat was cut and the two killers ran for their lives.” The old abbot recounted these events in a flat voice, as though foul murders were commonplace in Saint Severt’s.