Isle of Glass (24 page)

Pain. A trail of fire across his shoulders.

Remember the discipline. Remember.
Pie Jesu, miserere mei
:
sunlight on apple boughs, chanting in the choir, a child bathing in both up in
the oldest tree, the Lady Tree, that had once been sacred. Remember sweet
scent, sweet singing, sweet freedom from pain. Ride on scent, song, light, up
and up to Light.

Lux. Fiat lux
, and light was made; and He looked upon
it and saw that it was good.

Far below in the dark place, a small soft thing clung to a
stake. Red weals marred its back. A black ant labored, striking and striking
and striking again. Voices cried out to him: to stop, to slow, to go on, to
beat, to strike, to kill. He laughed.

Men ran forward, small robed shapes, to seize the hand as it
swung upward yet again, to wrest the whip from it, to hurl the madman laughing
and struggling to the ground.

Alf plummeted. Agony—agony—

He gasped and gagged. Blood lay heavy on his tongue. He had
bitten it through.

They loosed his hands. His knees held him. Control, yes.

It took control. He turned. The faces nearest him held
horror.

“Fifty lashes,” someone said. “I counted fifty.”

“Sixty,” another insisted.

“More. It was more.”

He dared not breathe, nor move hastily. He shook off the
hands that reached to aid him, walked slowly forward. Reynaud was gone, his
laughter silenced.

He stopped where his guards bade him stop. Dimly he was
aware that they did not wear mail or the Bishop’s blazon but dark robes; they
were tall, as tall as he or more. One face he knew, but he could put no name to
it. A strong bony face, a great Norman arch of a nose, a tousle of straw-colored
hair.

It blurred. Beyond it men heaped faggots about the stake,
taking their time, letting the crowd work itself to a frenzy. The words and
rituals of the Church sank into that uproar and vanished.

Thea stood in the center of it, very pale, very still. Tall
though she was, as tall as most men, she seemed terribly frail. She tossed back
her hair and turned her face to the sky; upon it, a look almost of ecstasy.
When Adam made the sign of the Cross over her, she smiled. Her lips moved.
“Lord of Light,” she said, “
Christos Apollo, chaire, Kyrie
... ”

It seemed an incantation. But Alf understood. She prayed in
her own Greek tongue, entrusting her soul to the Light.

Her soul.

She believed that. He tried to spring forward.

She bound him with power, bonds he did not know how to
break.

They chained her to the stake—face outward, she, so that all
could watch her die. She was smiling still; and she changed her speech to
Latin. In sudden silence, her voice rang silver-pure. “
Deum de Deo, lumen de
lumine
—God from God, light from light... ”

Alf’s hand sought the silver cross. With a swift movement,
he broke its chain and hurled it flashing and glittering across the wide space.

Bound though she was, she caught it. Kissed it for all to
see—all those who thought her the Devil’s kin. One of her guards thrust a torch
deep into the fuel at her feet. Drenched with oil, it blazed up.

The flames coiled about her, caressing her with a terrible
tenderness. She stretched out her hands to them. Her face was rapt, serene,
untouched by pain or fear.

A howl welled from the center of Alf’s being. He tensed to
break free of the hands that gripped him. And cried aloud; but not with the
beast-roar that had been born in him. For the fire had enfolded her; she had
melted like mist in the sun.

Out of the pyre rose a white bird with a cross in its bill.
It soared up and up into the vault of the sky, winging for heaven. The fire
licked hungrily at an empty stake.

Alf lay on his face. His body rested in blessed comfort, but
his back was a fiery agony.

He had a dim memory of fire and shouting, swift-moving
shadows, the call of a trumpet, a thunder of hooves. And Jehan’s face, drained
of all color, with eyes that held death.

No,
he had tried to tell him.
No vengeance, Jehan.
For your soul’s sake, no vengeance!

But his voice would not obey him; darkness closed in.

For yet a while longer he rested. There was someone with
him, and someone fretting at some little distance; he did not extend his inner
senses more than that. It was too pleasant simply to lie still and know that he
was well, and more, far more, that Thea lived.

He opened his eyes. The King stared back, surprise turning
to relief so sharp it was like pain. “Alfred?” he asked, trying to soften his
voice. “Brother?”

Alf smiled. “Good—day? Sire.”

“It’s night.”

“Is it?” Alf raised himself on his hands. He was clean,
naked but for trews of fine linen, his back salved and bandaged. As he sat up,
the King reached for him in protest but shrank from touching his hurts.

He drew a breath, carefully. Movement had awakened new pain,
the price of his folly. He set his teeth against it and looked about. “Sire!
This is your own bed. How did I come here?”

“I brought you,” Richard answered. “You shouldn’t be moving
about.”

“I’m healthy enough. What’s a stripe or two to a born
eremite?”

The King’s eyes glittered. “It was a lot more than two. And
a lot more than twenty.”

“Sire,” Alf said, “don’t harm anyone for my sake.”

“They were eager enough to harm you for mine.”

“I started it, Sire. I sought it out.”

Richard fixed him with a steady amber stare. “I know you
did. I should hang you up by the thumbs. Do you have any conception of what it
did to me to be chasing wild geese all over Cumbria, and to find out too late
that you were right under my nose? If you weren’t half-flayed already, I’d have
your hide for that.”

Alf’s head drooped; his eyes lowered, shamed. “I’m sorry,
Sire. Most sorry.”

“You ought to be. While I was out hunting will-o’-the-wisps
like the scatterbrained fool I am, half my knights decided they'd rather spend
Yule at home by the fire than fight in the snow on the Marches. It’s paltry
satisfaction that I smoked out a nest of rebels and got an excuse to hamstring
those cursed Hounds.”

“Sire!” Alf cried. "What did you do to them?”

“Little. Yet. They and their traitor Bishop are locked up
safe and sound in the abbey. Tomorrow Aylmer and I will give them a somewhat
fairer trial than they gave you.”

Alf staggered to his feet, heedless of pain and of gathering
darkness. “My lord. I beg you. Don’t punish them.”

The King swept him up with ease. Yet even when he had been
set in bed again, he would not be quenched. “You must not!”

“Boy,” Richard said, half in affection, half in
exasperation, “I seem to spend a great deal of precious time fighting off your
Christian charity. But this time you won’t extort a surrender. His two-faced
Excellency is going to discover that he didn't divert me by burning the wrong
prisoner; and the Hounds have had this coming to them for a long, long while.
It was their mistake to let Foulques talk them into going after you.”

“It wasn’t Foulques. They would have pursued me no matter
who I was.”

“Would they?”

“Yes,” Alf said. “I told them the truth, Sire. I’m no demon
nor any demon’s servant. But that was only half of the truth they looked for.
The woman they tried to burn...was no less human than I.”

Richard’s face did not change. “The holy angel? So she was
like you. I thought so. Clever of her to make such a spectacular exit.”

Alf was speechless.

Richard laughed. “Thought I was just another mortal fool,
didn’t you? I grant you, for a long time I was. But while I was combing the
Fells for you it all came together. Even the most dutifully Christian monk
doesn’t take a foreign king’s command to heart unless he has good reason. Such
as that that King is his kinsman.”

“My ancestry—”

“Probably it’s as low as you want to think it is. But you’re
one of Gwydion’s kind. They hang together, those Fair Folk in Rhiyana. Did he
send the woman to help you?”

“She came of her own accord.”

“Ah,” said Richard. “Was she as beautiful as you?”

“More so.”

“Impossible.” The King stretched. “Rather interfered with
your attempt at martyrdom, didn’t she?”

Alf’s cheeks burned. “I was acting like a fool, my lord. She
knew it. And so, at last, do I.”

“Someday I’ll find a way to thank her for that. When I
realized what you were, I knew where you had to be. Nigh killed a good horse
getting back here—just too late. If you’d had your way, by then you’d have been
a pile of ashes.”

Alf shivered. Richard struck his brow with his fist. “What
am I doing, wearing you out with things you’d rather not hear? Walter! Food and
drink, and water the wine!”

o0o

It was not the King’s servant who brought the meal, but
Jehan.

Richard scowled at him but said nothing. He set the cups and
bowls on the table by the bed with such admirable self-control that Alf smiled.
He did not even look at the invalid, although he bowed to the King, every inch
the royal page.

“Jehan,” Alf said, “are you angry with me?”

The novice spun about. His face had the stiff haughty
expression it always wore when he was lighting back tears. “Angry, Brother Alf?
Angry
?”

“I’ve made you suffer terribly.”

“Not as much as you’ve made yourself.”

“Ah, but I wanted it.”

“I know. Idiot.” Jehan looked him over with a critical eye,
only a little blurred with tears. “You look ghastly. When’s the last time you
ate?”

Alf could not meet his gaze. “I don’t remember.”

“
That
long?
Deus meus
!” Jehan sat on the side
of the bed and reached for a bowl. “Broth then and nothing else, till we've got
your stomach used to working again.”

“But I'm not—”

“You’re never hungry. That’s most of the trouble with you.
Will you eat this yourself or shall I feed you?”

Beyond Jehan’s head, Alf could see Richard’s broad grin.
With a sigh he took the bowl and raised it to his lips.

o0o

“He rode into Carlisle like the wrath of God,” Jehan said
when Richard had gone to contend with his court, “galloped through the crowd,
scattering them right and left, and stopped dead in front of Bishop Foulques.

“Odd,” the novice went on. “I expected him to blister our
ears with curses. But he just sat there on his heaving horse with his men
straggling up behind him, and stared. The Bishop turned the color of a week-old
corpse and started to babble. The King put up his hand; old Foulques lost his
voice altogether.

“The Hounds were howling like mad things about witches and
sorcerers and spells; the kerns were yelling about saints and martyrs and
miracles. Some people were fighting, the guards who were Hounds against a bravo
or six from the town.

“The King had his man blow his trumpet. That quieted people
down a little. ‘Aylmer,’ he said and pointed to the people on the platform,
‘take these men into custody.' Bishop Aylmer did, except for Earl Hugo and his
lady, who’d scampered for cover as soon as they heard the King’s trumpet.

“The King didn’t stop to watch. He took you up on his
saddle—had to fight me for you, too, till I saw the sense in it—and carried you
to the keep. Nobody got in his way.” Jehan shivered. “I hope I never see anyone
look like that again. He was almost as white as you, and he looked as if he
wanted to cry but couldn’t, and the not being able to made him want to tear the
world apart.”

Alf rested his forehead on his arm. His voice was soft,
muffled. “Did he curse me?”

Jehan hesitated. Then: “Only after his doctor said you’d be
all right. He has an impressive vocabulary." After a moment, when Alf made
no response, he added, “He stayed with you all day. He wouldn’t go out at all,
for anything.”

There was a long silence. Jehan thought Alf had fallen
asleep, until he said, “Thea is gone.”

“As soon as it’s safe, she’ll be back.”

“No. She’s gone. She’s kept me from getting myself killed;
she’s had enough of me. She’s gone back to her own people.”

“I suppose you’re relieved,” Jehan said. “You never liked
her much, did you?”

Alf did not answer.

o0o

The King did not submit Bishop Foulques and his allies to
the disgrace of a public trial. His revenge was more subtle. He spoke privately
with the Bishop, with the Earl, and with the Paulines; and each emerged in
somewhat worse state than when he had entered.

“It’s what we intriguers call a ‘settlement,’ ” Aylmer
explained to Alf afterward. “Foulques has changed his allegiances rather than
find himself Bishop of Ultima Thule. Hugo has become the most loyal of the
King’s men, with his eldest son for a surety. And our Brothers of St. Paul have
found sudden and urgent reasons to leave the kingdom.”

Jehan laughed. “
Urgent
is the word. None of them
dares to show his face out of doors. The kerns are in a rage that the priests
of holy Church have tried to burn one of God’s own angels; they’d gladly put a
Hound or two in the fire.”

“I’d gladly oblige them,” the King said, “but I know I’d
never have any peace if I tried.”

Alf smiled. He had managed to bathe with Jehan’s help and
dress in a cotte of Richard’s, and sit propped carefully with pillows. With the
King and the Bishop and the novice about him and a page waiting to serve him,
and half a dozen servants hovering within call, he knew how a prince must feel.

“You’re the people’s darling now,” Jehan told him. “Everyone
who said you were a sorcerer is swearing up and down that you’re a saint, and
that God sent His angel to save you from the fire. Sir Olivier’s been going
about declaring that you healed him with Divine power, and promising every
farthing he has to charity because he testified against you.”