Brother's Blood (23 page)

Brother Amandus had been speaking with someone at the guesthouse door, and now he came over to Edwin. ‘Pardon me for interrupting, my son, but I have a message for you.'

Edwin's curiosity was aroused. ‘For me?'

‘Yes. You were showing a particular interest in Brother Richard, I believe?'

‘Yes, that's right. Is he recovering?'

Brother Amandus shook his head and spoke sadly. ‘I'm afraid not. A message has just come to say that he is dying, so the brethren are summoned to his bedside to pray. Brother Durand said that as you had spoken with him so recently, you might want to be there as well.'

Edwin put down the piece of bread and rose. ‘Of course, Brother.' He looked at Martin, who was also half out of his seat, and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It's all right, you don't need to come. You've never met Brother Richard, and anyway I don't want Brother Durand getting upset with you again. Why don't you stay here and talk?' He hoped that Martin would guess the implication of the slight emphasis on that last word, and draw the other guests into conversation to see if he could find out anything further about them. Martin had been giving him strange looks since he came in, anyway, but hadn't said anything. He must make time to catch up properly. But first, he had to go to a deathbed.

Edwin sighed and wiped his hands on his tunic before belatedly realising there was a cloth on the table exactly for that purpose. Oh, never mind. He didn't have time right now to be worried about what others thought of his manners. He followed Brother Amandus out of the guesthouse and around towards the infirmary, where a line of other monks was entering. The guestmaster talked without ceasing as they crossed the precinct, telling him all about the elaborate-sounding rituals they went through every time a brother lay dying and for once Edwin wished he would just shut up. He rubbed his eyes and felt grateful when Brother Amandus fell silent as they reached the door.

Edwin crept quietly towards the end of the infirmary, conscious that all the other monks were silent. The sick man, head still grotesquely swollen, lay prone, his skin pale and waxy. Candles had been set around the head of the bed and the screen moved out of the way so that there was more room. The abbot, the prior and some fifty or so other monks – all the ones who weren't either too infirm themselves or too far away to be summoned, guessed Edwin – were gathered around the bed, kneeling, heads bowed. They began to chant a prayer. He hesitated.

Brother Durand saw him and beckoned him over. ‘We are praying to Our Lady, patron of our abbey, and to St Apollonia, patron of those who suffer from toothache. Please, join us. Brother Richard seemed to know you were there when you visited before, and that is the last time he seemed to be in control of his wits.'

Edwin dredged his memory for those long-ago lessons with the village priest. St Apollonia … she had been martyred by having all her teeth pulled out with pincers, one by one, before being beheaded. If any of the saints in heaven could sympathise with Brother Richard's plight, she could. He knelt tentatively by the edge of the pushed-back screen, behind the monks, and looked at the abbot; when he received a nod he began to pray. He drove all other thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on the plight of the agonised and dying man. Please, St Apollonia, you must have suffered terribly, could you not intercede with the Lord to ask Him to save Brother Richard from this terrible fate?

Brother Richard opened his eyes and gave a groan, which rose in pitch to a wail. As Edwin watched, the left side of his throat, hugely distended, started to crack. Then, suddenly, as though it had been pricked by an awl, it burst and a mass of foul-smelling discharge poured out. The monks exclaimed and jumped back, all except for the abbot who raised his hands and his face to the heavens. ‘A miracle!'

Edwin looked from the ecstatic abbot to the man in the bed. The swelling was subsiding rapidly, his eyes, nose and mouth reappearing. Edwin's legs felt wobbly, and he didn't think he'd be able to rise off his knees if he tried. He had seen the mercy of the Lord.

Abbot Reginald and the monks were raising their voices in a hymn of thanks and praise. Then the abbot looked directly at Edwin. ‘A miracle indeed. God shows us His grace and delivers our brother from his suffering. And He does so the instant you begin praying. Today you have been the instrument of the Lord.'

Edwin's legs were still shaking, but he scrabbled backwards in panic and managed to get to his feet. ‘I … er … I …'

He turned and fled.

Once he got back to the guesthouse he ran straight past the others, still sitting at the table, ignoring their looks and questions. He tried to stop his fingers shaking long enough to remove his boots, and then got into bed and pulled the blanket over his head.
Today you have been the instrument of the Lord
. That hadn't really happened, had it? He had prayed and Brother Richard had experienced a spectacular recovery.

He heard the sounds of surprise from the others at the table, but thank the Lord nobody came over. Martin would know he wanted to be on his own. It was hot and airless under the blanket, but to put his head out of it again would mean re-joining the world, and he wanted to be apart from the world a little longer. He shifted the blanket to make a space for air to enter, making sure it was on the side which faced away from the table so nobody would notice.

He heard the sound of Brother Amandus returning, his exclamations to the others about the miracle he had witnessed, and how it had come about. He heard Aylwin and Sir Philip saying they would go out for some air before they retired, and then them leaving. He heard Brother Amandus clearing the dishes and cups from the table. He heard Martin getting into his bed, and the creaking noise of the wooden frame as he did so.

What he did not hear was the voice of the Lord, telling him what to do next. He closed his eyes.

The following morning Edwin staggered bleary-eyed out of the guesthouse. Should he have told Martin where he was going? He couldn't think straight. But Martin was asleep and he was only going out to clear his head for a while – he'd be back before Martin woke up. It was very early. The choir monks were probably up at some service or other, but the rest of the precinct had that first-thing-in-the-morning feel that he had sometimes encountered in the ward at Conisbrough when he'd arrived before everyone else was awake. He could hear birdsong, and the smell of baking bread wafted across from somewhere. The slight chill of the breeze helped him to wake and he wandered over to the footbridge which crossed the beck dividing the precinct from the outer court with its gardens and orchards. He leaned on the rail and listened to the birds and the sound of the water. He stared across at the outer court, the fishponds, the mill, and allowed his eyes to close.

After a while, he realised that the water didn't sound right. He opened his eyes. Yes – instead of a kind of regular flowing and gurgling noise, there was a lot of splashing. Edwin looked over the upstream side of the bridge: the water was streaming down the beck and under the bridge as it should. He moved to the other side: the water was coming out much less fast than he would expect – a little more than a trickle, but nothing like the flow that was going in. There was a splashing noise coming from underneath, so he knelt down and leaned forward, tipping his head as far under the bridge as he could. There was something there – some object was in the water, blocking the stream. The incoming flow was hitting it, which was what the noise was, but very little was getting past it. Soon the water would back up around it and cause an overflow, which would be immediately noticeable, but right now you would really only notice if you were standing on the bridge.

Edwin moved to the bank and considered his options. There wasn't really much point in finding or waking anyone else until he knew what it was under the bridge – if it turned out to be a dead cat then he'd feel rather foolish if he'd caused an alarm. He sat down, took off his boots and hose and rolled up his linen braies.

The water was chilly, much colder than he'd expected it to be during such a warm season. Still, it was bearable. He was downstream of the bridge so the current of water around his legs was minimal, not much more than knee-deep, and he had no problem wading through it. He reached the bridge, crouched, held on to the wooden planking just in case, and stretched one arm underneath. His fingers touched something – which he was fairly certain wasn't a dead cat – but he couldn't shift it. Taking a firmer grip on the planking he strained as far forward as he could and managed to grasp the object more firmly. He braced himself and pulled as hard as he could, and it came towards him.

Of course, what he hadn't considered was that releasing the object would also unblock the beck, and a large wave of freezing water hit him in the face and chest. Gasping and clutching the object to him, he held on to the bridge until the first wave had passed, and then waded towards the bank. As he was shaking the water out of his eyes and hair he felt himself grabbed by the shoulder of his tunic and hauled out on to dry ground.

Martin was standing over him. ‘What in the Lord's name are you doing? I can't leave you on your own for one paternoster, can I?'

Edwin spluttered and regained his footing. ‘I'm fine. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry you – I just came out for some air and I noticed that the water wasn't right, and …'

‘What? Anyway, never mind that now. Come back inside and dry off. What's that you have there?'

Edwin's teeth were chattering. ‘I have no idea. Something very wet.'

‘Well, we can look at it once you're dry. Come.' Martin picked up Edwin's discarded boots and hose and propelled him back towards the guesthouse.

The movement helped Edwin to warm up, and by the time he was back inside he felt a little recovered. The other two guests were still in bed so he stripped off his sodden tunic and shirt as quietly as he could, found the spare in his pack, and put his dry hose back on. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the dripping object.

It was a book – or, at least, not a whole book but the parchment leaves from inside it. The pages were so sodden and stuck together that it was impossible to see what the contents might have been, and Edwin regarded it helplessly.

Martin leaned over his shoulder. ‘Maybe if we can dry it out …?'

‘I'm not sure how much that will help – look, the ink has run – but it can't do any harm.' A shaft of sun was coming in through the window so Edwin placed the pages on the floor directly in the light. It was the best he could do.

Aylwin and Sir Philip were now rising, and Brother Amandus bustled in with some bread and ale. He looked at Edwin and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Remarkable. I have heard from Brother Durand that Brother Richard is further recovered this morning after a night's sleep, and he seems certain to live and to regain his health. A miracle!
Gaudete
, indeed.'

In the excitement of his find and his dousing Edwin had almost forgotten about the events of last night, but now it all came crashing back in on him. Was this the sign he had been waiting for, the sign that told him that he should stay here and live his life in peace and study, rather than returning to the earl and his dangerous existence there? He sighed and tried to force down a piece of bread.

Once Aylwin and Sir Philip had left the guesthouse – and exactly how long were they going to stay here, anyway? – and Martin had gone to check the horses, Edwin went back to the pages. There was a puddle of water around them on the floor, and most of the leaves were still very wet, but the ones which had been on the top in the direct sunlight were a little drier. The parchment was wavy and the ink smeared, but maybe there was hope of finding out something. Edwin carried it over to the table.

He couldn't make any sense of it. What he could see, despite the condition, was that the pages had not come from a fine illuminated volume – it was just parchment and ink, no traces of paint or colour. And if there had been some, surely he would have seen the remains of it even after it had been in the water. No, it was just writing. But it seemed to be going in a funny direction – he turned the pages round and round, in case he was holding it the wrong way up – and the ink had run so much that he just couldn't read anything; it all just looked like squiggles. He pushed it away from him and sighed.

He was alerted by a noise behind him, and he tried to put his arms around the pages so they couldn't be seen. It was futile, of course – it was perfectly obvious what was on the table in front of him.

It was Aylwin, who walked over to his bed and was rummaging in his bag. ‘I forgot my hat.' He retrieved it and placed it on his head, turning to leave. As he did so, his eyes fell on the pages and he walked up to the table. ‘I didn't know you were interested in wool.'

‘What?'

Aylwin gestured at the pages, currently spreading a damp patch on the table. ‘It's a wool ledger. Not in very good condition, clearly – where on earth did you find it?' He didn't seem to expect an answer, but instead leaned forward over it.