The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (48 page)

When Amicia awoke, it was almost dark, and men were already mounting.

Ser Gabriel took her elbow. “We’ll halt at the monastery at Bothey,” he said. “Unless I miss my timing, you can all go hear Easter Vigil and greet the risen saviour.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I’ll spare you the details,” he said. He didn’t grin. He looked terrible, with straw on his clothes and deep circles under his eyes.

“Don’t be a foolish martyr,” she said. “You need rest, to fight. And Easter mass might help you in many ways.”

Then, he smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.

They rode into the late evening. The air was warm, fragrant with a later spring than they’d known ten days earlier in Albinkirk, where there was still snow under the trees. Here, it was the edge of summer, and in the last light of day, flowers bloomed in a riot of colour and scent along the road’s edges, and all the hedgerows were thick walls of green guarding fields where the plantings were already a fist tall or taller.

Darkness fell. An owl hooted repeatedly ahead of the column, and then another, to their right—the north, she thought.

The whole column moved from a walk to a trot.

Sister Mary didn’t even groan. She was a better rider every day, and she didn’t complain at all. She hadn’t moaned since they slept under the tree. Nor did Sister Katherine speak of the joys of riding anymore.

In fact, no one spoke at all. The saddles creaked, the armour clacked, and the company passed like shades of the past along the Harndon Road.

The moon climbed the sky.

She dozed, and then awoke to hear owls hooting to the front and to the right, again, and the column shuffled to a halt.

Amicia kept riding. She told herself that she wanted to be at mass if it could possibly be arranged, but she knew in her heart that she wanted to know what was happening. She could taste smoke—in the back of her throat, on the tip of her tongue. She saw the Moreans walling people—refugees—away from the column—at sword’s point.

At the head of the column there were a dozen men standing on the road around two points of mage light.

There was a newcomer in the command group and she knew him immediately from the siege—and took his hand.

“Ser Gelfred!” she said.

He knelt in the road, and she blessed him—and in moments she and her sisters had work. Gelfred and his corporal, Daniel Favour, were both wounded—long slashes with much blood and little immediate danger beyond infection. The three nuns sang and healed.

“Ser Ranald’s inside the palace with a dozen of the lads,” Gelfred said. “I can’t say more. You told us to keep our operations separate.”

Ser Gabriel smiled without humour. “Don’t do everything I tell you,” he said. “So you have no idea what Ranald is up to?”

“Not no idea,” Gelfred said. He smiled. “Sister, that’s the first time in four days I haven’t been in pain. God loves you.”

She smiled.

Ser Gelfred was back to work. “Not no idea, Captain. We brought Lady Almspend away a week ago; and yester eve Ranald handed us Ser Gerald and one of the aldermen. Alderwomen.” He shrugged. “And the paynim—no, I lie, he came from the knights.”

“The knights?” Bad Tom asked.

“The Archbishop’s disbanded the Order and declared all their lands and money forfeit. He tried to seize all of them.” Gelfred shrugged. “They’ve too many friends—by all the Saints, even the Galles love the Order. They probably had warning before the King signed the writ. Prior Wishart took all his people—he’s gone.” Gelfred wrinkled his nose. “Not gone far. Waiting for you, I reckon.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Disbanded the Order,” Sister Mary said.

“I told you, Sister,” Amicia whispered.

“It’s different, here,” Mary said, sounding scared. “Disbanded? What of our vows?”

“Our vows are unchanged, as is the Order,” Amicia said with far more confidence than she felt.

“And the smoke?” Ser Gavin asked.

“A good part of the south end of Harndon was afire yesterday,” Gelfred said. “The commons burned the archbishop’s palace.” He didn’t quite grin. “Someone took all the relics and—well—all the treasure from the cathedral.”

Ser Gabriel was stone-faced. “Harndon is burning?” he asked.

Gelfred nodded.

“Someone’s laughing,” he said bitterly.

“There’s more. The prince of Occitan is just south of the city. He’s made a camp—not a fortified camp, but an open camp like a tournament.” Gelfred coughed into his hand. “I—hmm—took the liberty of telling him that we had reason to believe the King would attack him.” Gelfred raised both eyebrows. “I do not think he believed me,” he added.

“How many men does he have?” Bad Tom asked, pragmatically.

“About what you have. A hundred lances—perhaps more.” Gelfred shook his head. “The Galles have three hundred new lances, and all the King’s Guard, and every sell-sword in the south.” He didn’t laugh, but again he allowed a smile of satisfaction to dent his mouth. “Including a fair number of my lads and Ranald’s.”

“Is the Prior at the monastery?” Ser Gabriel asked. He cocked an eyebrow.

Gelfred nodded. “Aye.”

Gabriel nodded, too. “Well—Easter vigil for everyone, then,” he said. “Mount.”

An hour later, and the company rode under the two high towers of the famous Abbey of the South—the Abbey of Bothey. Bothey had long been a favourite Abbey of both the Kings of Alba and the Earls of Towbray. It had all the marks of riches and royal favour—gold and silver vessels, magnificent frescos, some very old indeed—carved choir stalls and an altar screen of two knights in ancient harness fighting a dragon.

For all their wealth, the monks were not decadent. The brothers of the Order tilled their own land, and the sisters from the “women’s house” sowed grain and made the best fine linen in the Nova Terra.

The company were led silently into a dark chapel by cowled monks in black and brown habits. Even the captain was silent and respectful. The monks on the gates had included some with robes over full armour, and two stern-faced nuns had received Amicia and her sisters. The darkened chapel was the size of many a fair town church, with rafters sixty feet above a marble floor of interlocking hexagons. The chapel was so dark that Amicia could not see her hand in front of her face—literally, for she tried. She was led off to the right, where the nuns and novices of two orders stood in silent communion.

No bells rang.

It was the last moment of Lent.

There was a rustling in the dark, at the back of the church, a single candle was lit by a monk, and a priest of the Order of Saint Thomas began to pray.

The single candle illuminated the magnificent chapel of the Abbey of Bothey. Fifty years ago, one of the most gifted pargeters Harndon had ever
nurtured had painted the whole chapel in one summer in the Etruscan manner; floor to ceiling paintings of the events of Christ’s life and Passion. The gold leaf alone was staggering, swimming in burnished metallic light even with only a single lit candle—and the quality of the painting was superb. Saint James was martyred, Jesus healed a man made blind and the now-sighted man rebuked the military governor for unbelief, his armour a bronze-gold against the brilliant polished lemon-gold of the background.

And then monks and nuns began to sing, as did the knights of the Order, the brother sergeants and the sisters. There were twenty knights in their robes standing in the choir stalls, and a dozen sisters of the Order from the two houses in Southern Harndon. For Amicia and her sisters, it was a homecoming—a delight mixed with sadness. And the mass was one that Amicia would never forget, sung so well in a chapel so redolent with both splendour and meaning, surrounded by her own Order—and by the men and women of the company with whom she’d shared the road. As the first hour slipped away and the congregation sang the rolls of saints and martyrs, a taut expectancy filled the church, and as the bell outside tolled the middle of the night and the birth of a new day, Amicia lit her candle from a torch held by a knight of the Order, and the church sprang from darkness to bright light, and many of the monks and nuns produced hand bells from their robes and rang them joyously, so that the shrill riot of bells seemed to drive the darkness out and replace it with the throaty roar of gold and the coming dawn.

By the time the host was consecrated, every one of the company were on their knees on the hard stone floor—even the captain.

And after mass—as they celebrated their risen God—there was wine in the abbey’s paved courtyard, and an air of festivity that many would not have associated with monks and nuns living a life of cloistered virtue. Monks in brown habits lay under the stars on the smooth grass of the cloister’s central yard, discussing theology, and nuns sat in among the pillars of the double cloister, sipping strong red wine and laughing. Most of the knights of Saint Thomas were unarmed and unarmoured, the rest stood with their swords incongruous with their black monkish robes and academic caps, while the nuns of the Order—more worldly, and more given to the practice of medicine than to mystical contemplation—laughed louder and drank harder. For an hour or more, the threat of civil war was forgotten by most in the glory of God’s resurrection.

Amicia found herself in a spirited conversation about the theological failings of the Patriarch of Rhum and the Archbishop of Lorica. The Minorites who held the abbey had more than a few hermetical practitioners among them—practical men and one woman who could make small fires, light candles, and the like. They were outraged—and deeply uneasy—at the sudden change in direction. They had thought themselves blessed, and were now told to believe themselves accursed. Many of the knights had
some turn of talent—and having already had their Order declared anathema, they were in no mood to discuss the intellectual possibilities or the failings of the scholastics in Lucrece.

As a nun of the Abbey at Lissen Carak, Amicia was both welcome and something of an oddity—the northern sisters hardly ever left their fortress. Amicia discovered in a few minutes of conversation that she was notorious as both a powerful mage and as a woman licensed to preach.

Ser Tristan, an older Occitan knight of the Order, frowned and admitted that he might not have been in favour of any woman saying mass.

“But you are one of ours,” he said. “And to hell with the archbishop.”

Sister Amicia wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or offended. She had been aware—at a distance—that there were factions in the church, but now she felt naive as she confronted their reality. Even in the midst of celebration, there were some to whom she was a hero, and others who clearly kept their distance.

She was reminded of her duty, and her place, over and over—a lesson in humility that she had the grace to accept.

After two cups of good wine and an hour of conversation, praise, censure, and a hundred introductions, she found that she was exhausted—almost too tired to sleep. While the knights who knew her from the siege carried her from group to group like a prize, introducing her to the monks, priests and nuns of both orders, Katherine and Mary had followed some of the other Thomasine sisters to the women’s house, and Amicia was on the point of asking Ser Michael for directions—she could scarcely keep her eyes open—when a small girl came, curtsied, and said Prior Wishart had summoned her. She found him in the outer yard with two secular knights she didn’t know and she put her hands in her sleeves and stood demurely, waiting. She was afraid she might fall asleep on her feet.

He glanced at her and smiled—a clear confirmation that she was to await him.

She allowed her eyelids to fall, and in the next few beats of her heart received a pulse of apprehension as great as she had ever known.

Something evil.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, but the low murmur of voices and the sound of celebration—from the town below them as much as from the yard—spoke only of the feast of Easter.

The prior came and took her hand. “I won’t keep you long,” he said.

He looked as tired as she felt.

“I need you to tell me anything you can,” he said.

“About Ser Gabriel?” she asked, understanding all too well.

“Sister Amicia, we’re teetering on the brink of civil war—or sliding past it.” Prior Wishart took her arm and led her to the abbey walls and then up stone steps to the crenellations. In the distance, on the edge of the dark horizon, there was a glow. And the smell of smoke was no longer hidden by incense.

“Where is my duty now?” he asked.

She didn’t think he was asking her.

“Can I trust him?” the Prior asked her.

She put her hands to her mouth. She almost giggled—a reaction of fatigue. “Yes,” she said.

Prior Wishart peered at her from the darkness. “You have a—hmm—relationship with him,” he said.

“I have not slept with him,” she said a little too quickly.

“Sister, I have been a soldier and a priest for a long time.” He looked out into the night. “If I thought you had then I would not curse you, but neither would I look to you for guidance. Some men—more men every day…” He paused. “They wonder if the man who is called the Red Knight—” He shrugged. “If he is the King’s bastard son. I have heard it said many times now. And I have a report that his mother, the duchess, is suggesting the north should make its own king.”

Amicia put her whole weight against one of the merlons. “Isn’t our Order supposed to be above this sort of thing?” she asked.

“Never. No organization, no order, no group is above the manipulations of others. If we are strong, we can help shape the final outcomes, and if we are weak, we may become the tool of someone powerful—a tool that cannot make its own decisions.” The Prior nodded. “One of my options is to take all of us across the sea, or into Morea. Another is to go into the north. To Lissen Carak. And await events there.”

Amicia was too tired for all this. “All I know is that he and his people think they will rescue the Queen,” she said.

“Ahh,” the Prior said. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “That is precisely what I wanted to hear.” He put a hand on her head. “Will he fight for the Queen?”