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Authors: Joni Sensel

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BOOK: The Humming of Numbers
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A
idan told Brother Nathan in broad strokes what he had done since he'd run out of the chapel the night before. He managed to do so without mentioning Lana, only describing the events at the alehouse as a vengeful attack by the villagers. Brother Nathan might very well know the whole story already, but Aidan would not be the one to bring up her name or anything she had done.
As he talked, he fought a distraction. He'd spotted a few fragments of wood in the corner. Roughly the size of spoons, they'd caught his eye because he could hear them humming numbers far too low for wood. He realized they must be the discarded wood rods Lana had been trying to pawn to pilgrims. Remembering that she had wanted them back, he hoped he would get a chance to retrieve them for her, either with or without Brother Nathan's permission.
When Aidan finished speaking, Brother Nathan tapped two fingers against his lips.
“I cannot tell you how grateful I am,” the old monk said finally. “My prayers have been answered in a way I thought impossible.” His eyes narrowed at Aidan. “One of my prayers, at least. Tell me, Brother Aidan, how another will be answered. You have been blatantly disobedient and absent from this monastery for nearly a full day. How shall I view your return? Shall I call Brother Eamon and give him the glad news that he still has a novice to ward?”
Aidan focused on the pain in his left hand to avoid the tingling shame that coursed through the rest of his body. He couldn't raise his eyes off the table.
“I still long with all my heart to serve as a scribe, Brother Nathan,” he said, when he trusted his voice. “But I have realized that my devotion may be too weak for me to be a good monk.”
“Or your own will too strong, perhaps,” Nathan remarked.
Closing his eyes, Aidan just nodded.
Nathan rose from his stool. Aidan flinched, not sure what to expect, but the old monk simply walked past to stand at his door, looking out. Aidan kept his face toward the wall.
“Your honesty, at least, pleases heaven,” Nathan said from behind him. “I am forced to agree. Yet I hesitate to release a novice whom God has directed to restore our library.”
Taken aback, Aidan listened to Brother Nathan's nine
humming an intricate harmony against the hush in the room. An imaginative spirit coiled inside that number. Hearing it, Aidan decided he had nothing to lose.
“I have not heard of it done,” he said to the table, “but might your scriptorium ever admit a lay scribe?”
“I cannot allow profane hands to set down God's holy Word,” Brother Nathan replied immediately, his tone clipped.
“Of course not,” Aidan murmured. “I'm sorry.” He had thought, when he had asked his question, that little hope lay behind it. The distance his heart now fell made it clear he'd been fooling himself. He let his fingers say good-bye to the books on the table before him. His hand shook.
Then he cleared the lump from his throat and added, “Should I see Brother Eamon before I go?” He wanted desperately to bury his dreams and escape.
“Not yet.”
Aidan clenched his jaw and waited to see what else Brother Nathan might say. The monk did not move from the doorway. The silence stretched on so long, Aidan would have thought Brother Nathan had departed if not for the lyric nine zinging behind him.
Finally he peeked over his shoulder to check whether Brother Nathan was even looking at him. The senior monk leaned against the door frame, his eyes closed, his head bent, and his hands folded in prayer.
Confused, Aidan fidgeted. Brother Nathan's instructions to remain, however, had been clear. While the failed novice watched and wondered what to do, the elder monk flashed his hawk's eyes open once more.
“I am not abbot yet,” Brother Nathan told Aidan. “It is likely, however, that I will be, unless our good Lord Donagh has more kin in need of a post.”
Wondering why Nathan even mentioned his own authority, Aidan concluded it must herald the declaration of some punishment or price for renouncing the life of a monk. He steeled himself to hear it.
“I will remain the scriptorium's master regardless,” Nathan continued. “We have more empty tables today than we did yesterday. Yet God's grace has ensured that the scribes who remain need not sit idle.” Leaving the doorway to return to his seat, he gave Aidan an inscrutable look from beneath his woolly gray brows.
“I cannot allow profane hands to copy God's Word,” Nathan repeated, “but decoration, perhaps, might not always require the tonsure. Vines and borders and humble creatures are part of God's work but not, strictly speaking, His Word. A lay brother might serve as a colorist or illuminator. Or a copyist of our two remaining profane works.” His gaze slid briefly to the books on the table before returning to Aidan. “If the circumstance were unusual enough.”
Aidan tried to draw a breath. His chest refused to permit it. He must have misunderstood.
“And if he could be trusted never to step over the bounds he was given,” Nathan added. “On pain of expulsion, with no second chance. Could you bow to such constraint? Obedience has not been your strength.”
His eyes wide, Aidan started to reply jubilantly. He'd always been more drawn to illumination than text, and most scribes specialized in one or the other anyhow. Whatever bounds Nathan drew would be spacious compared to losing the opportunity forever. And the abbey's expectations of those who would never take perpetual vows and the tonsure were light enough to bear, especially knowing he could throw them off again every eve—
A thought struck him. He hid his face in his good hand. “I guess I cannot,” he moaned. “I have asked someone to become my wife, just this day, and she has accepted.” He imagined telling Lana that he'd changed his mind. Although he thought she might understand, he couldn't face the full weight of the guilt and loss that wrenched at him now, just considering it. He still wanted Lana, even knowing the price. “I'm sorry, Brother Nathan,” he added. “Only heaven knows how much. But I can't turn my back on that pledge. Or on her.”
His eyebrows crowding his hair, Brother Nathan rubbed
his weathered jaw. “I must say you have been remarkably busy since you left to gather oak apples, Aidan,” he said. “And you are wise to recognize the gravity of your commitment. But I do not see any objection per se. A lay brother is not a monk in holy orders, and while many live here with us by the rules of this house, others vow chastity as a voluntary virtue. Members of the laity are not bound either as residents or bachelors.”
Aidan could not believe his ears or God's grace.
“Besides,” Brother Nathan said dryly, “you know as well as I do that some of our clergy, and monks in too many lax houses, take Saint Paul's advice against wives rather lightly. I will ask only that you behave as discreetly as possible. You are here by the Hour of Prime and remain through Vespers, just as servants and all lay brothers do. And she does not enter this abbey except to worship at the High Cross like any other Christian woman. I reserve the right to rescind this privilege, Aidan, and I will do so immediately if my heart ever tells me that God does not approve.”
Aidan would have remained there giving thanks until sunset if Brother Nathan had let him.
I
n his excitement, Aidan almost forgot Lana's wood. When he remembered, just outside the doorway, he stuck his head back inside and meekly asked Brother Nathan if it would do any harm for him to take it.
The senior monk raised one eyebrow and gave Aidan the most scrutinizing stare of his life. He felt as though Brother Nathan were seeing him unclothed.
“I told them you would never withstand that temptation,” Brother Nathan said. “I tried to distract you. I see how soundly I failed. But I suppose the truth is better known sooner than later. I hope you will take it upon yourself to lead your bride, once she is yours, nearer to God.”
Having no intention of repaying Nathan's generosity with a lie, Aidan licked his lips and said, “I will try, Brother Nathan.” He didn't expect to succeed.
“At least ensure that she does not lead you farther from Him. If I see that, our agreement will end.”
“Of course,” Aidan assured him.
Nathan's gaze shifted to the wood on the floor. “Can I trust that this … kindling will trouble pilgrims, Lord Donagh, and this abbey no more?”
“I swear it.”
Brother Nathan waved at the sticks. “Take it and begone, then. I expect you to find a clean robe and a few hours of sleep and to stand at the High Cross with the lay brethren by Prime in the morning. You can begin your new life fittingly with the Mass.”
Aidan cradled the wood to his heart and pondered its humming all the way back to Lana's uprooted tree. He wasn't sure she would be there, but she had offered to return before sunset in the hope that he could also return and share the results of his trial. Though he tried to run, his feet dragged in weariness and he stumbled over painful memories of lost family and friends. He wondered, aching with loss and guilt, if those dreadful deaths had somehow funded his recent good fortune. As excited as a part of him felt, he would not have chosen the trade.
Hearing his crackling footsteps, Lana ducked from behind the hawthorn to greet him. She crowed at the sight of her wood in his hand.
“You brought it!” Not even taking it from him, she jumped to plant kisses all over his cheeks.
“You must promise not to sell it, or work mischief with
it, or even discuss it with anyone,” Aidan warned, trying to cover all possibilities.
“I promise you,” she said soberly. “Can you feel it?”
He nodded, giving over her treasures. “I can't understand it, but I see why you think it is special. It hums of eleven as well, and other numbers, all primes.” Outside the abbey, Aidan had inspected the age-polished wood, listening as closely as he could. He heard seventeen and thirteen and the same bright and trickish eleven that he thought of as belonging to Lana. Perhaps she would show him where she had found it. He doubted that fragments of Christ's crucifix had traveled so far from the Holy Land, or that their bearer would have lost them if they had. He would not be surprised, though, to learn that these lumps of wood had some other connection to power—fragments from the ship of Saint Brendan the Voyager or the staff of Saint Patrick or the Briton King Arthur's great table. He expected Lana would puzzle it out eventually.
As she danced in joy, the sticks clasped in her hands, he told her his own happy tidings. She cheered—then pouted.
“That means I will see you only at night,” she said.
“And Sunday,” he reminded her. “The scribes do not work then. Winter nights are coming, though, Lana. They may be cold, but they're long.” With effort, he quashed the grin that wanted to arise at the prospect of long nights with her.
She pursed her lips and tapped them with a piece of her wood. “Aidan, I am so happy for you, and I will accept nights without days. Please don't misunderstand me. But if I do have to renounce my inheritance, and you create books all day long, how will I eat? And suppose we have children? Can you bring food home for us?”
Aidan stiffened, dismayed by how poorly he had thought this all through. He'd been so amazed by Brother Nathan's offer, and so weary, that his mind had not been working clearly.
Then the answer arrived, belatedly. It brought relief wrapped in heartache.
“We'll still live in my father's cottage,” he told her. He thought of the work his mother had done there, and it hurt. “You can help Regan and Gabe's wife prepare food and tend the animals. My brothers would never let them starve, nor will you.”
A glimmer of hope shone on her face before being trampled by her dogged practicality. “Sooner or later they'll have wives of their own, though,” Lana said. “Wives who will want to take over the house and the fruits of their husbands' labors.”
As difficult as it was for him to imagine Liam with a new wife, Aidan knew she was right. He nodded, untroubled. His mind had already traced a few other options.
“The animals are the crux, though, Lana, not the house. A sod house can go up in a few days. You and Sarah can till my land share together, or we can trade some of the oxen for more milk cows and ewes so you can make butter and cheese. Decent cows will yield enough extra to trade. I'll bring home what I can and do chores in the dark if need be. Either way, I dare say you'll eat better than you have until now.”
The strain on her face broke. “That wouldn't be hard,” she said. “And I am happy to work for my keep like anyone else. But I don't know much about cows.”
“You'll learn. You've learned your mother's lessons, obviously.”
She set her wood carefully down at the base of a tree. Her deliberate manner made Aidan think she was angry or changing her mind about becoming his wife. He watched, apprehensive, as she walked back to face him and took his uninjured hand in both of her own.
“I may be able to trade as a midwife as well, once my mother is gone,” Lana said softly. “If you will not prohibit it.”
Aidan drew a deep, careful breath. “I will make sure you don't need to,” he said. “I can't have the monks know my wife is a witch.” They would hear rumors regardless, of course. Brother Nathan's hard staring that morning implied
that they already had. There were limits, however, to what men could ignore.
“Monks don't need midwives, so they won't find out.” Her sly grin lit her face. Aidan fought a swell of terror, wondering what trouble he was sowing for himself.
His fear subsided in the wash of her singing eleven. It surged when she smiled, and Aidan's doubts were drowned out by the strength and hope and mystery of that hum.
Lana squeezed his fingers and asked, “Do you have to return to the abbey right away?”
When he told her he was free until the morrow, she drew him by the hand.
“Come sit here with me on the moss, then.”
She inspected his burned hand and added a few more birch leaves that she chewed and moistened with her spittle. Aidan felt like a kitten receiving a bath from its mother. He thought of his own mother, alive yesterday and now dead, and he swallowed hard against the sting in his throat before it could rise to prick childish tears.
When Lana was done, she did not let go of his hand.
“I wanted to tell you something,” she said. Her gaze remained on her handiwork but a smile played on her lips.
Aidan tried to keep breathing. So many of the things she said made him nervous. He wondered if that was why his heart often quivered in her presence.
When she raised her eyes to his and their blue weight fell on him, his stomach flopped. As tired and heartsick as he was, that look made him forget it.
“Do you remember the first time I saw you?” she asked.
“When I gave you the rose?”
“No, before that. When I first arrived at the abbey.”
“When you were dragged in, you mean,” Aidan teased. He recalled more than her unwilling entry, however. When her eyes had first fallen on him, she had looked startled and then inexplicably annoyed.
“Hush,” she admonished. “Never mind that. I recognized you. I lied later on when I said that I hadn't.”
“I could tell,” he told her. “But why?”
“I didn't recognize you from the village. I once scryed your face.”
Aidan rolled his shoulders to cover a shiver. He did not like the idea that his image had appeared in any witching water.
“Don't you want to know why you appeared in my scry-bowl?” she prodded.
“I'm afraid to.”
She giggled and reached to tweak his chin, making him feel like a small boy even as his skin wished her hand would linger and touch more. He decided again that claiming her as his own would be worth the discomfort.
She said, “I was scrying the face of the man I would
marry. I didn't know whose face it was, because you spent so much time with the monks, I suppose. But when I discovered you there at the abbey, in a robe, I thought my scrying must have been false.” Her mouth curved in a self-satisfied grin. “I'm rather pleased it was true.”
Conflicted, Aidan inhaled the thick scent of the moss beneath them. Its lively, thirty-ish hum reassured him. He told himself that if God's divine plan aligned him with a witch, then better a skilled one than a clumsy one.
“What else haven't you told me?” he wondered.
Her saucy gaze fell away. The hand holding his tightened, and he could feel that she did it to conceal a tremor. Glad he could unsettle her in return, he pressed, “Be fair to me, Lana. If we're to be bound together, it is my right to know.”
“When you touched me last night,” she said softly, “and I stopped you, I was sorry I had.”
Her words and the memory shot a hot spike low into his belly. This was not the sort of confession he had expected. Uncertain what reply she would want and afraid of giving a wrong one, he stayed silent. He only reached a finger to trace the red yarn of her rowan charm where it curled around the side of her neck. His fingertip slipped insolently under the yarn. Aidan wished it were the collar of her shift.
She murmured, “I was just scared, Aidan.”
Her eyes contained the same anxiety now. He could see something else plain, though, and perhaps more important, that she did not say: Last night, she had needed to know she
could
stop him.
With effort he pulled his hand from her neck and clenched it in his lap. “As much as you scare me,” he said, “I don't want to scare you. Not like that. And I don't want to make you think of … of anyone who has hurt you.”
She didn't respond, only gazed at him, but he lost track of her eyes for her lips. They pressed together, then parted, then seemed to beg him to kiss them.
He gave them what they, and he, wanted. Lana did not react as if she were scared.
Their kiss blurred into a harmony of warm breath and soft gasps and heartbeats and not enough skin. Then a stone poked Aidan's ribs, and probably Lana's, as he lay back with her on the moss. The nip of pain sliced through the thundering None that rolled through his head when they touched. It returned him briefly to himself. He realized what he was about to do if she did not stop him … again.
He shook his head to clear it and pushed himself back upright.
She remained prone on the moss, only shifting to avoid the sharp edge of the rock. She watched him.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “You take all of my will from me
except for one thing. But we can stand at the door of the church soon enough. I can wait if I know it will not be forever.”
Although his voice sounded firm in his ears, he could not stop the question sent by his eyes. Lana gazed back for long seconds before her lashes veiled the blue gleam in quick, flustered sweeps.
“If we will truly be wed, Aidan, and wed truly …” Her cheeks, already rosy, blazed red. “I would rather it be here beneath the trees.” With trembling fingers, she drew his right hand from its arrest near her hip to the curve of one breast, first over the shift clinging there and then sliding between the hidden chemise and her skin. Her lips barely breathed the rest of her answer: “You needn't wait.”
Her betrothed did not hear it. He fell into the sensations under his hand and back down against her to bury his face at her throat.
Aidan did not draw back or ask permission again. He could tell by her rising to him that he did not need to. He never completely forgot the pain that throbbed in his hand, nor the one that weighted his chest and muttered of violent deaths, but Lana helped him see beyond those to much better things. The wounds they both carried slipped off and lay beside them instead of crushing on top. Aidan drew Lana's eleven over his skin like a cloak, and inside it,
found love. For a time, the humming of all other numbers dimmed behind the brilliant None they created in each other's arms.
The oaks, hazels, and yews of the grove heard that None, and they whispered.
BOOK: The Humming of Numbers
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