One
Anno Domini 1199,
the tenth year of King Richard's reign, late winter
ather Tuck threw back his cowl, baring his tonsured head to the morning breeze, and stretched his legs into long, mile-eating strides. With each new step he breathed deeply of the fresh air. For a moment, he wished he'd worn his wool shirt beneath his robe instead of spring linen. He'd huddled near the fire too often over the winter; he needed to stretch all his senses again, including bringing fresh cool air into his lungs instead of warm but stale interiors.
The sun peeked through thin clouds in a rare effort to bring spring life to the land. He sniffed and found traces of new greenery trying to burst forth on the roadside verge. The equinox was not far away.
Very soon the landowners would direct their freeholders and serfs to begin plowing.
In the meantime, he could escape the musty and crowded Benedictine abbey near Locksley Downs, outside Nottingham. The abbot had been ill and dying for months, leaving Tuck to handle the details of keeping the abbey running and following the Order as laid down by their patron saint.
The twenty monks, three priests, and ten orphan boys demanded his attention continuously. He had grown weary of tiny details and confinement. Escape to the land was finally his to claim. Outlying villages needed him to say funeral masses for those who had died over the winter and perform marriages for couples who could not wait for spring to wed as their first child would pop out before then. Perhaps he could also share the joy of baptizing babies born a bit early. He loved performing that sacrament more than any other.
But he feared he'd have to send more spirits beyond the grave than welcome new souls into the Church. The winter had not been overly harsh, but outlaws roamed at will. If only King Richard would come home and set this kingdom in order before finding another war to fight on the continent.
A nearly forgotten sensation tickled the back of his neck.
"Elena?" he whispered. "I put you back into your niche decades ago, on the night before I took my novitiate vows."
You are needed in Withybeck. Now. One of ours is in peril.
And then his head grew numb as the little goddess withdrew.
Withybeck. The village had grown up beside the Withy, a stream barely big enough to be classified as a river. Its importance lay in the drop in elevation, marked by a half mile of rapids. A century ago an enterprising builder had erected a mill; the wheel turned the grinding stones by the force of the flowing water. Even in high summer when the water levels lessened, the wheel turned raw grain into flour.
Tuck turned his steps south by southwest, cutting across fallow fields and jumping creeks and downed trees with the agility of a much younger man.
One of our own. Elena meant a child of mixed-blood from human and forest creature. Not many such children had been born in the last forty years. Elena must be getting desperate to find one to carry her when the moons of human time and faery time aligned once more on Midsummer's Night Eve.
At the crossroad, he turned his steps due south. Shadows from overhanging trees made the way look forgotten and ill-used. But the green hump in the center of the narrow road showed signs of recent trampling by many heavy feet.
Within a few steps the stink of wet smoke gagged him.
He choked back tears of despair while panic pumped speed into his limbs.
The reek grew stronger. His eyes burned from the pall that overlay his path.
"Heavenly Father, bless those who are innocent victims of whatever tragedy has visited them," he murmured. He didn't have time to pull his prayer beads from his inside sleeve pocket, so he called up the image of his green glass beads with silver filigree decade pieces and ran the texture of them through his memory.
By the time he saw the remnants of burned thatch through the thinning trees, he feared the worst. Wattle-and-daub house walls leaned inward, doors sagging upon broken or burned leather hinges. Chickens, goats, and sheep lay senselessly slaughtered in random clusters upon the green. Mutilated bodies of men, women, and children sprawled in awkward attitudes of flight cut off by arrows and axes.
The odor of spilled blood grabbed at his throat.
He had to stop and clutch his knees as he dragged in tainted air to replenish his laboring lungs. Before he'd managed to control his ragged breathing, he crossed himself and spoke prayers for the dead by rote, his mind too paralyzed by the horror of the massacre to remember what he said.
"NO!" A primal scream ripped from his body, pulling all of his strength with it. His knees wobbled, and he dropped to the ground, not in prayer. Not in awe or gratitude.
You need to hurry!
In that moment a whimper of distress overcame the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. Such a faint sound. He wasn't certain it hadn't come from his own throat.
One of ours.
There! It came again. Not a moan of pain, but an anguished sob. He followed the sound to his left, the north end of the little village, away from the ransacked storehouse and the burned cottages.
Tuck crawled to the edge of the fouled well and used it as a brace to haul himself to his feet. His knees held, and his back uncramped. Stiff and uncertain, careful not to step on any of the dead bodies, he followed the sound.
"Mama!" A toddler's cry for the first person it could think of for help.
"I'm coming," Tuck said quietly, careful not to alarm the only survivor. "Easy, child. I'm coming."
A heap of rubble blocked the path out of the village. The sodden thatch smoked. An overhanging oak tree had kept the soaking winter rains from drying out the bundled sheaves. And so the roof had been saved.
"Mama!" the toddler insisted.
Tuck threw off the mat of the house wall, the crumbling clay held together by woven wicker, split and disintegrated where it landed. There, in a pocket of space beside the fire ring sat a naked child. Tear streaks amongst the smoke and dirt that smudged its face told a story of its own.
The dead body of a woman stretched out beside the child, one arm reaching toward him. An ax protruded from her back. Bone and blood and guts lay exposed along her spine.
"Oh, you poor baby," Tuck knelt beside the boy, heedless of the broken bits of house that tore at his thick woolen robe. Without giving the child a chance to shy away from a stranger, he gathered him into his arms, rose to his feet, and backed away. Instinctively, he rubbed the boy child's back as he pressed the sorrowful face against his shoulder.
His gut clenched in sorrow and wonder. Tuck clutched the boy, digging his fingers into soft flesh.
"There, there, baby. Let's get you some clothes, and food, and water."
"No baby. Nick!" the child insisted, pounding his fist into Tuck, then with a trembling chin he buried his face into Tuck's shoulder again. His back rippled in a convulsive sob. "Mama?"
"Nick you be, then." Tuck fished a bit of bread from the scrip at his waist.
The boy gnawed at it hungrily. "Mama." Nick reached back toward the crumbling remnants of his home. His big leaf-green eyes spilled tears.
"Your mama can't come, Nick." Tuck choked back his own tears. "You'll have to come with me now. I'll take care of you. You're safe with me." He stroked the filthy hair which might be blond, maybe light brown.
"Mama," the boy sobbed again, as if he understood. "Mama."
In the back of his head, Tuck heard a sigh of relief from Elena.
Anno Domini 1208, the ninth year of
King John's reign. Spring.
"Nicholas Withybeck, where be you, you miserable good-for-nothing-blasphemous nameless orphan?" Father Blaine shouted along the cloister of Locksley Abbey.
Nick winced at the tirade. He wasn't nameless. He'd known his name was Nicholas when Father Tuck had brought him to the abbey. He'd been but three at the time, perhaps as old as four, but undersized. Cold, hungry, missing his mum and da, he'd known his name but little else. Abbot M¾son had blessed him with the surname Withybeck because that was the village where he'd been found, digging through the burned-out ruins of his home, looking for his dead parents and something to eat.
Later he learned that soldiers returning to their lord after besieging the castle of another lord had roamed free, looting and pillaging at will, because King Richard had stayed in France and did nothing to stop his barons from warring against each other.
Now King John ruled. He hired mercenaries from all over Europe to fight his wars, turning them loose without paying them, and they roamed throughout England looting and pillaging as well.
Nick was glad he had the stout walls of the monastery to retreat within when marauders were about.
Most of the boys in the dormitory had similar stories. But Nick was the only one Father Blaine pursued, expecting him to err with every step.
Maybe because Nick was the one most likely to find trouble-or create it.
Nick had to smile at that thought. He was just trying to make life interesting. The never-varying routine of the monastery was comforting. Predictable. Safe.
Stifling.
And boring beyond measure.
He pressed himself tightly against the interior wall of the roofed colonnade, keeping to the deepest shadows. Almost there, he reassured himself. Another foot's length.
Father Blaine's leather sandals slapped against the paving stones. He kept to the open garden at the center of the cloister, in full sun. He cast his own shadow rather than hiding within those cast by the building. Shadows hid things Father Blaine didn't know how to explain.
Nick's fingers touched wood. Keeping his movements as small as possible, so as not to disturb his cloaking shadow and thus attract attention, he fumbled with the iron latch on the door.
Just yesterday he'd oiled the latch and the leather hinges on this door that he wasn't supposed to know about. But then he knew he'd be in trouble today, or tomorrow at the latest, and wanted to ensure his escape.
Nick still didn't understand why Father Blaine, the youngest and most recently ordained of the priests, found Nick's little drawings in the illuminated manuscripts in the scriptorium so offensive. All he did was embellish the trailing vines and flowers he was supposed to draw in the margins of sacred texts. With a few flicks and squiggles, the greenery revealed the hidden faces of fantastical creatures.
Nick saw those faces within the greenery every time he went into the copse on the abbey grounds to gather acorns or shoo the chickens back to their coop. Occasionally, he trapped a rabbit or downed a grouse with his sling, but he always asked permission of the faces first.
Ah, there, the latch in the door behind him clicked softly. Nick paused half a moment to make sure Father Blaine hadn't heard the telltale sound of metal against metal. The young priest had made his way around the garden to the far side, next to the entrance to the boys' dormitory.
Before Nick could think better of his plan, he eased his slender body into the musty darkness and closed the door behind him. Again, he waited for sounds of pursuit with his ear pressed against the thick wooden panels. Nothing. He doubted he'd hear Father Blaine even if he paced and shouted right in front of that door.
With one hand trailing the damp stone wall and the other in front of him, he moved down the lightless, narrow spiral staircase that began less than a full pace inside the door. Father Blaine-too new and uncertain of his authority and his powers as a priest to venture into the unknown-would never follow him here.
Nick counted thirty-three steps and shifted his balance to meet the stone floor of the landing. Then another thirty-three steps downward into the crypt. His senses told him he was beneath the Lady Chapel, behind the high altar of the abbey church.
He had to be more quiet than usual. Noise might filter up through the small spaces between building stones. Since the Holy Father, Innocent III, had imposed an interdict upon all of England, no Masses could be sung at the high altar, or anywhere. And all the senior clergy, including his own Abbot M¾son, had to leave England for Paris or Rome. So the three remaining priests, twenty brothers, and the dozen orphans who lived here knelt in the Lady Chapel to offer prayers. People from the village did, too. The place was rarely empty these days.
Nick held his breath as he struck flint to rock, a particularly hard one placed conveniently on the stairwell just for this purpose. A spark glowed against a rush light. It found food and flared to cast a golden glow. When Nick knew that the flames would continue, he turned and surveyed the small circular cavern lined with narrow shelves where remains of the dead rested. He lowered his gaze, not willing to converse with ancient skulls and bones crumbling to dust.
No new bodies resided here now. Two generations ago, the then-abbot had declared this place full and began burying the dead in a cemetery in a secluded courtyard outside the main abbey buildings.
He shifted his attention away from the dead toward the low altar pressed into a niche against the far wall. Elaborate figures carved into the stone marched in an orderly row just beneath the top lip. A scrolled column supported each corner.
Nick didn't think the founding monks of Locksley Abbey had made those carvings to honor their dead fellows and patrons. A scroll in the scriptorium he'd read hinted that the founders had chosen this place to build an abbey because locals had worshipped here for as long as anyone could remember. The altar was here when Romans bricked around it. The altar was here when the walls were built above it. The altar was here honoring the dead before the first abbot was laid to rest in his niche on the bottom left.
Nick sat on the single low step leading up to the altar. A bracket on his left accepted the rushlight. He let his fingers trail down the Roman brickwork. Old bricks. Older than the stone walls and floor. He found the imperfections in the mortar and picked at them nervously, waiting until he was ready to face Father Blaine and his punishment. He knew that hiding only enraged the priest more and made the punishment worse. But . . . he needed the peace of this place while he gained the strength to accept his due.
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