The Gathering Storm (57 page)

Sorrow rose, too, and like Rage stared steadily westward. He barked once.

Two brothers emerged from the trees and hurried around the verge of cultivated land, avoiding sinks where the mire of winter hadn’t yet been chased away by sun and heat. This past winter there had been little snow but too much rain.
Fields of winter spelt and rye wrested years ago from the marshlands surrounding the monastic estate had to be dug out again to save the crops.

“Brothers! Ah! There is Brother Alain! Father Ortulfus is asking for you, Brother. Pray come with me.”

One stayed behind to take Alain’s place while he walked back to the monastery with the other, the hounds trotting behind.

“What news, Egbert?”

“Nothing good. You see that smoke? That’s from Farmer Hosed’s steading. One of their sheep was brought ’round here a few days past because of trouble with its lambs—”

“I remember that.”

“Yes. Now there’s rumor that he’s got murrain at the steading. What if our sheep caught it here?”

Alain drew the Circle. “God pray they do not. Poor man!”

“If it hasn’t already spread … God help us! We could lose all our livestock!”

“Nay, Brother. Pray for the afflicted, but do not beg for trouble. You don’t know yet that his sheep are ill, nor that our livestock will become so.”

Brother Egbert looked at him sidelong, then drew the Circle of Unity at his breast and mumbled a prayer under his breath. “Wise words, Brother. I will endeavor to accept God’s will.”

Father Ortulfus awaited them beside the low fence that ringed the monastic buildings. Sheep and lambs grazed on lea land, and beyond their pasturage lay broken woodland where the forest had been cut back for firewood and timber. Prior Ratbold stood among the small herd of milk cows, checking their muzzles and hooves.

“You have heard the news, Brother Alain?” asked Father Ortulfus.

“I have, Father.”

He nodded crisply, not one to waste words. “You will accompany Prior Ratbold to the steading. If it is a murrain, the law must be obeyed. The farmer must pen all the animals in. When they’re dead, he must burn them, and after stake their heads up as a marker of the plague.”

“Why send me, Father? I grew up on the shore. I know fishing better than sheepherding.”

“Go with him,” said Ortulfus in a tone that discouraged argument. “Do what you can.”

Ratbold returned, shaking his head. “The brown cow does have a limp, Father, but it’s too early to tell what’s caused it. It could be the mud, nothing more.” He brushed dirt off his hands as he acknowledged Alain. “No sense in waiting, Brother. Are you ready to go?”

They set off with ale in a skin and a hank of bread and cheese for their supper so that they did not trespass upon the afflicted farmer’s troubled resources. It was an hour’s walk to the southernmost steading of those that had grown up in the shadow of the security offered by a monastery held under the king’s protection. All the farmers around here brought tithes to Father Ortulfus twice a year, salt, honey, chicks, firewood, and occasionally a child when too many mouths overburdened scant harvests. A portion of the grain they brought in to be ground at the mill was reserved for the monastery’s storehouse, set aside for lean years.

Last summer’s harvest had sufficed, despite rumors of rot and drought ruining crops both south and west of Hersford’s lands. This spring the untimely heat dazzled. Flowers bloomed early; trees budded; green shoots poked up along the banks of sodden ditches. The road was all mud, so they walked on the verge, slogging through knee-high tansy and burgeoning thistles that Alain beat down with a staff to make an easier passage for the hounds and the prior. The slap of the stick came easily to him, rousing memories of skirmishes fought months or years ago.

It might as well have been a lifetime past. All that he had loved was utterly gone and could never be regained.

“You are troubled, Brother,” said Ratbold in his blunt way.

Alain wiped away a tear. Ratbold had a reputation as a surly man, impatient and rude to those he disdained, and perhaps it was true that the prior castigated ones who seemed like fools to him. But never once in the months Alain had abided at Hersford had Ratbold rebuked or belittled Brother Iso or any of the lay brothers who might be termed “simple.”

“I am only thinking of what I lost, Prior, my poor wife who is dead.”

Ratbold made no reply, waiting for Alain to go on. The sun gilded a profusion of violets crowded along the edge of the track, mingling with a golden scattering of coltsfoot, harbinger of spring.

“I am content to be here, for I believe this is where God mean me to be, but I still grieve when I think of her. She would have known a cure for the murrain.”

“Would she now? Do any know such a thing except witches and sorcerers?”

“Do you see those violets? A syrup cooked down from the flowers is a remedy for a child’s cough. A compress can soothe a headache. Coltsfoot dried and burned can soothe a cough as well. This and much more I learned from her.”

“Any herb-wife knows such lore. So does Brother Infirmarian. That does not make a witch.”

“She had great power, alas. That is why she died.”

“Ah. The cataclysm you spoke of when first you came to us.”

“I know none of you believe me,” said Alain wearily, “and I do not see how I can stop what has been set in motion. If I knew, I would act, but I have nowhere to go, no one who will listen—”

Rage yipped like a startled puppy, plunging into the underbrush, and Sorrow barked once and followed. Branches thrashed and rattled, marking their trail.

“A rabbit,” suggested Ratbold.

Alain halted and leaned on his staff. “It’s more like they’re frightened.”

“Those hounds, frightened!” Ratbold snorted, then cocked his head to one side. “Listen!”

From down the road came the noise of a troop of riders in procession, the jingle of harness, the rumble of cartwheels, and a faint snatch of a hymn. The two men waited as a cavalcade rolled into view, a dozen caparisoned horses fit for a noble lady accompanied by three carts and twenty soldiers outfitted with halberds and bearing a distinctive banner: a gold Circle of Unity on a black field.

“These come from the skopos!” whispered Ratbold. His staff, forgotten, tipped and fell into a swath of violets.

The fine and noble clerics leading the procession took no notice of two rumpled brothers standing humbly at the side of the road. The passing carts sprayed mud all over them as Ratbold stared, too astonished to speak, and Alain watched. There was something familiar about the lean, elderly cleric riding at the fore. Why had the hounds run off like that?

The procession moved quickly along the road and out of sight.

“Clerics from the skopos herself! How exalted they appeared! Such fine mounts they rode! Did you see the embroidery on the saddle blankets!” Ratbold was so beside himself with excitement that he was flushed. “Do you think they mean to take guest privileges at Hersford?”

“They can scarcely be going anywhere else on this road.”

The underbrush rustled as Rage and Sorrow reemerged, hindquarters waggling madly as they begged forgiveness. Alain rubbed their heads and patted their shoulders as Ratbold got hold of himself and picked up his staff.

“Well, now, Brother Alain. We’ve an errand to run!”

The hounds proved eager to journey on in the opposite direction of the procession, and although Alain glanced back, he could not divine what had spooked them.

Farmer Hosed was desperately pleasant when he greeted them beside the log fence that ringed the clearing he and his family had hacked out of the woodland. The fire was out of sight behind a row of healthy apple trees backed by a thick hedge. Its smell burned in Alain’s nostrils.

“Come in, Brothers! There’s a bit of cider left over from the autumn. It’s a little sharp, but it will still wet your throat. No need to have come so far. We’ve everything well in hand. There’s nothing here to see. Nothing. Nothing.”

A group of children of varying ages stared mournfully at them, keeping their distance from the hounds. The eldest was a girl; after she offered each man a wooden cup filled with sharp cider, she stared at them with a hopeless gaze, hands wrapped tight in her apron. She had warts all across the fingers
of her left hand and her left cheek had a blistery rash. All of the younger siblings bore a similar rash.

“My good wife died two year ago, leaving me with all these young ones. There’s no wife to be had in these parts, all of them married and none old enough to wed for a good number of years. There was a widow last year, but she died of that flux that took off my youngest. I kept a man in to help me, an easterner, but he was no good. He took all of his things and six eggs yesterday morning and abandoned us. I suppose it’s him who spread tales.” He was skittish, but it wasn’t the hounds that scared him; he glanced once in their direction and then not again.

“Can we see the herd, friend?” asked Ratbold. “The good abbot has asked us to do what we can.”

The farmer looked ready to cry as he led them past his cottage, which was split into living quarters and a wintering stable for his livestock. The penned-in area beside the stable lay calf-deep in mud from the winter rains, but no sheep sheltered there now. They continued past the garden and the henhouse to a meadow where a bright-eyed dog and an older boy kept watch over the flock: three ewes and four lambs. The hounds ventured forward cautiously to view the other dog, who eyed them from a distance, growling softly but not leaving his station at guard over the sheep.

“It’s just the mud,” the farmer insisted. “That’s what made them go lame. That’s why I brought them out here, to get their hooves out of the mud. It’s only two I had to slaughter. I burned them, just to make sure, because I knew folk would talk. These others, they were right as rain this morning.”

Ratbold cursed. Two of the ewes were lying down and the third was limping badly. The lambs seemed unnaturally quiet where they lay beside their mothers, not romping, making no reaction at all as strangers walked up beside them.

Ratbold caught up to the limping ewe and grabbed a leg, cupping its hoof in one strong hand. “It’s the murrain, all right,” he said. “The blisters are hard to see. Here, all round where the horn joins the skin. Here in the cleft. Can you feel how hot the hoof is?”

The other ewes showed no blisters, although they refused
to rise, gathering their hind legs far forward and going no farther up than a half crouch.

“Ai, God!” The farmer hovered restlessly at Ratbold’s back, struggling to hold back tears. “Is there any hope for it?”

“It’s breaking the king’s law to hide the murrain,” said Ratbold. “You must pen in all your animals and burn them after they die, put their skulls up on stakes as a warning—”

The farmer’s first sound was a wordless, despairing cry, followed by a burst of sobs and lamentation. “My good sheep! My good sheep! What will happen to us?”

Behind, the children began to blubber and weep. It was a cataclysm for this family, who would lose their flock and all the wool, lambs, meat, and cheese it brought them. The steading lay on the slope of hills with a dense clay soil; this marginal land was suitable for pasturage and a garden and not much else but still close enough to gain a substantial benefit from proximity to the monastery and its adjoining farms.

“Let me bathe their hooves,” said Alain. “Maybe some good will come of that. Have you wound-heal or sicklewort?”

The farmer could barely speak through his tears. “Nay. Nothing of that sort, Brother. I’ve never heard of such things. Is there any cure for the murrain?”

“You know there is not,” said Ratbold. “Now pray leave us, for Brother Alain and I must discuss what to do next.”

Weeping, the farmer retreated to the huddle of his children, watching helplessly as Ratbold scolded Alain.

“Brother Alain, it is a sin to raise false hopes. There is no cure. He’ll lose his entire flock.”

“I pray that he does not!”

“Once it strikes a herd, it strikes them all. This is truly the Enemy’s feast. All we can hope for is to kill this plague here so it doesn’t spread to the other steadings and the monastery.”

“Father Ortulfus said I should do what I can. Has anyone tried a bath of herb water, or an ointment?”

“Do you suppose they have not? If there was any healing that would banish the murrain, it would have been found by now. Do what you wish, but it will make no difference. We’ll have to pen in the animals and stay here to watch over them. We can’t trust him to follow the law. He knew it was the murrain—and was hoping to hide it. When the animals are dead, we’ll
see them burned and then return to the monastery. That is the only way.”

“May I bathe their feet in any case, Prior? No harm will come to me, and it may ease their suffering.”

“It’s foolhardy—!” began Ratbold, but checked himself as if a voice too quiet for Alain to hear chided him. “Nay. Do as you wish, Brother Alain.”

“Coltsfoot may work as well,” mused Alain. Three of the children had sores around their lips, although he had never heard of murrain striking people. Yet the children, too, might benefit from Adica’s herb-craft, a mash to heal sores and ease rashes, an ointment to banish warts or soothe the eyes. Adica was gone, and his life with her had been obliterated in the white heat of the terrible spell she and her fellows had raised to destroy their enemies, but what he had learned from her would not perish as long as he lived and could pass the knowledge on.

The girl and the two youngest children trailed after him, keeping their distance from the hounds, as he gathered coltsfoot and violets. He showed the girl what he was doing, let her assist him. The flowers he boiled down into a syrup, the leaves mashed into a fresh poultice.

It was dusk by the time he sank onto a stool in the meadow and washed the hooves of the sheep. The animals were too ill to fight him, although the blisters seemed no worse than they had looked earlier.

“Will they get better?” asked the girl, crouching beside him. He had painted her warts with oil of gentian; purple dots speckled her hand, and a greenish plaster coated her cheek. She smelled medicinal, like a child who had rolled in the wild spring greening.