Divine Sacrifice, The (27 page)

“Do I know you, woman? Or are you a witch?”

“Neither.” She laughed, though it was more of a cackle. “I caught a whiff of rose water when you entered. Only a noble or his servant would use such. When you ducked the
dagger, I heard only the sound of one set of fingers balancing you. A two-armed man would have used both. Who in the western lands has not heard the songs being sung of ‘Smiling
Malgwyn,’ who could kill Saxons with his grin and who can look at a man and ferret out the evil deeds in his heart?”

I felt my face go red. “You have the advantage, woman. You can see me but you sit in darkness.”

Another laugh and the sound of a flint, a spark and a flame brightened the room.

I had never seen a woman, or anyone, so old. Her wrinkles were deeper than the River Brue. And with a shock, I realized that her milky blue eyes were as dead as my lost arm. She was blind.

A bit later, I had gathered more firewood for her and was heating a measure of mead. I settled in opposite her and poured a beaker for us both.

“Why have you traveled so far, Malgwyn, to talk to an old blind woman?” Myndora, for that was her name, asked.

“I seek information from the past. A man up the road said that you had been a servant to the family of Patrick, he who is now
episcopus
to the Scotti.”

“A servant? No, I was no servant, but I knew them all well. Calpornius, Patrick, even old Potitus, the
decurion
.”

Finally, I thought. Answers. “Did you know Patrick’s friends, Tremayne and Elafius?”

She grinned again and sipped her mead from a battered beaker. I saw she had no teeth but two upper ones and those were worn to the nub. “Know them? Yes, I knew them well. Until Patrick was
taken by the pirates, that is. That spoiled everything for us. That was a bad year. Little Addiena was ravaged and killed. Patrick taken. Nothing was the same after that.”

“Aye.” I nodded. “I know of Addiena’s death.”

She pulled back. “Your voice and your deeds make you too young to know aught of this. How come you to know of Addiena?”

“Patrick told me.”

Myndora looked away then with those sightless eyes. “And did he tell you that he killed her?”

Then it was my turn to be shocked. “How came you to know this? Patrick said he only told one other soul!”

Myndora nodded and grinned. “Aye, Tremayne. My brother.

“ ’Tis so long ago now,” she began. I sipped my own warmed mead and listened as I had to Patrick. Some stories are worth waiting for. I felt, rather than knew, that this was
one.

I was in love with Patrick, though he never knew it. He was strong and tall and handsome. Patrick was confident, not like Elafius; he could not shut up.

Tremayne cautioned me about Patrick, who was older than me. He said that though he loved Patrick as a brother, there was yet something dark and sad about him. Tremayne was very protective of
me and would as lief I not play with them.

And then all in our village were shocked and crazed by the killing of Addiena. I remember the men searching the forest and the coast. I remember poor Elafius so stricken by grief that he
would not leave her body except to choke down a little food.

But once, during one of those times, Tremayne slipped me into the hut where she lay, and he pulled the wrap from her throat to show me where Patrick’s hands had bruised her. “You
see, do you not? That could be you! I saw him choke her until her eyes bulged and they began to turn red with blood!” I refused to believe it. I shook Tremayne’s hands off and flew like
the wind into the fields and the forests. Tremayne found me there, hiding behind a huge yew tree.

I protested again, and that is when Tremayne told me. “I watched him do it, Myndora! I watched from afar. And later, Patrick confessed it to me, and swore me to
secrecy.”

“But you must tell!” I scolded him. “No,” he answered. “I do love Patrick and I know it was an accident. I break my promise only to show you that there is truly
something dark and cruel in him.”

I stopped her then. Many things she said created questions in my mind. “These are the words he spoke to you? Are you certain?”

“I will never forget those words, if I live another lifetime.”

“If Patrick told no one but Tremayne, then how did the church find out about Patrick’s crime, for they are calling him to account even now?”

“Oh, that.” She chuckled and hid her toothless smile behind a hand. “Years later when my brother was battling the church, he blurted it out in haste to Germanus’s pet
sacerdote,
Severus, to prove that the church is not infallible in its judgment of men or theology. Severus was taken captive in the east before he could look into the matter
further.”

“But why would Tremayne argue with Severus?”

“Oh, well, he was not called Tremayne by then. Like many who enter the service of the Christ, he took a new name. Then, he was called Agricola.”

I felt the breath leave my chest and my knees grow weak. “Patrick’s boyhood friend was the Pelagian Agricola?”

“Certainly. And do you think that Patrick was the only true believer of the Christ from Bannaventa?”

“But Agricola fled after Germanus’s visit. Everyone knows this.”

“My brother left, it is true, but he did not do so to honor that blowhard Germanus. He went to Gaul to fight yet another day. Once there, he took another name and served the Christ for
many years there.”

“Then he is dead.” A statement, not a question. A sudden sadness came over me as I realized that all three boyhood friends, who had all dedicated their lives to the Christ, were
gone.

“No! No!” Myndora protested. “My brother is not dead. He is in these lands now. He came to see me not a full moon past.”

“Agricola? Here?” My heart beat faster as I suddenly realized that at least one of the answers I sought had been before me all of the time.

“Of course,” said Myndora happily. “Only now his name is Gwilym and he is a
monachus
at Ynys-witrin.”

“Gwilym,” I repeated, more in a mumble than not. And I took a huge gulp of the now cool mead.

“Yes, and he brought his daughter along, a lively, headstrong girl named Rhiannon.”

And then I drained my beaker and nearly collapsed.

G
wilym was Agricola! And not only that but he was Patrick’s friend Tremayne! And Rhiannon was his daughter! My poor old head would never be
the same. Yet it made sense. It was not uncommon for men to change their names when joining the church. And Agricola could hardly use his own name when returning to his homeland.

So much was clear now. So many puzzling things fell into place. Gwilym hid from Patrick because he knew that Patrick would recognize him as both Tremayne and Agricola. Poor old Elafius did well
just to remember his own name. A part of me smiled. Gwilym must have enjoyed baiting his forgetful old playmate.

I wondered if Coroticus knew who he was sheltering, or had he taken Gwilym in to better his chances of bedding Rhiannon? Something told me that he did know at least part of it. That Gwilym knew
Patrick may not have been a secret the abbot kept, but I would have bet a pot of
solidi
that he knew he harbored the great Pelagian Agricola.

Poor Coroticus! The murky stew of complications he had cooked up might cost him his post after all. Outside the storm had risen to great heights, battering the old walls of the house and ripping
at the cloth door. And then ripping it away with a horrendous screech.

I huddled against the old woman to protect her from the storm. She grabbed my shoulders with surprising strength, releasing them only long enough for me to pound some vagrant intruding on our
space with a stick of firewood.

All through the night, her thin arms clutched my chest, only the shallow movement of her chest letting me know she lived. I kept the fire blazing but we spoke no more words. No words were
needed, at any rate. She seemed to be afraid that she would destroy this fragile bond we had established.

“Whose villa is this that you have built onto?” I ventured during one lull in the storm.

“Is that of concern?”

“Curiosity more than anything. I like to know whose hospitality I’m usurping.”

“Abandoned hospitality, my one-armed scribe. This was Patrick’s villa, or rather his father’s, Calpornianus. But surely your friend Patrick will consent.”

“Would,” I mumbled.

“What was that!” Myndora’s hearing was as clear as a newborn’s.

I sank down then, amongst a pile of furs and stared at the floor.

“What have you not told me, Malgwyn?”

I turned away from her as wind whipped through the door.

“What?” She sounded less now like the old woman and more like the young girl she had once been. “Speak now!”

Still, reluctantly, I slowly turned my head and faced her. “Patrick’s heart no longer beats among us. He was killed not two nights past, Myndora.”

Though her eyes could no longer see, they filled with tears. “You could have told me that my father was dead and I would shed no greater tears. How did he die?”

And so amid the cry of the wind, the bashing of the branches, and drumbeat of the rain, I held Myndora as she cried and told her some of Patrick’s demise, but only some. She did not need
to know how he had been taken from us.

“Did Gwilym and Patrick see each other before he died?”

“No, Myndora. Tremayne’s duties took him to other villages and he did not know of Patrick’s arrival.”

“Elafius did not tell him that Patrick was due to arrive?”

“It was a sudden visit; even we were not aware when we left Castellum Arturius. Word did not reach Arthur until we arrived at Ynys-witrin.” Beyond the flapping door, I could smell
sea air, salt air. I held the cloth tightly and watched the lane. Nothing. No travelers. No merchants. No one. Something was wrong. Where was the stream of travelers I had seen the day before? If
they were not here, that could only mean that they saw some danger in this place as well.

“Myndora, hear you nothing?”

“I’ve heard little since you arrived.”

“Is there a tower in the villa?”

“A tower?”

“A watchtower. A tall cornice, anything, any place from which I can see the countryside about.”

“Potitus built a chapel down near the stream. It held a tower at the apse, with a cross atop it.”

“Do you know if it is still there?” The stupidity of my question hit me.

“Of course.”

And I asked another stupid question. “How do you know?”

“I hear every sound in this place. The wind from the great channel makes a certain pitch when it passes around the cross. That’s how I know it’s still there.”

I looked at her with something approaching love and respect. That she had survived for this long, blind, and that her hearing was so remarkable was beyond understanding. Quickly, I pulled a
white sheet, bold and mangy. The walls of the villa were dirty gray, and the sheet would nearly match them.

“Wait here.”

“And where else should I be waiting?”

I left her grumbling, cackling voice behind and slipped between the villa buildings, the old bathhouse, the kitchen block, until I could see the chapel with its tower surmounted by a cross close
by.

I stacked three large stones in an uneasy pile, which started me on my journey. With just one whole arm, the going was truly touchy, but my legs counted for much. Soon I was atop it, my one arm
wrapped around the cross, and I hung on for life itself to my post atop the windy, stormy cross. It felt like my skin was freezing to the post. Just a few kilometers away I could see the cold
channel, the sea between the land of the Scotti, “Hibernia” the Romans called it, and our own. I saw easily how a band of Scotti could have landed and stolen up here to take Patrick in
his sleep.

It took but a few moments to adjust myself to this blowing gale, the rain striking my face like little pebbles. I was forced to continually wipe my eyes with my forearm, unable to release the
base of the cross. In a moment, the rain eased and I could see the coastline and beyond. But what I saw was more than surprising, more than remarkable.