Prince of Dogs

Page 28

On a bench beside the gateway sat a monk, brown-robed, hooded, and silent. The lantern hung from a post, illuminating him in a pool of soft light. He lifted a weather-roughened hand at their approach and without speaking opened the gate to let them in. Because she was a woman and thus could not be admitted to the innermost cloister, she had seen few of the monks. Of those, only the genial cellarer—the monk in charge of provisions—and the guest-master seemed willing, or permitted, to speak to visitors. Many monks and nuns took a vow of silence, of course. The brothers at Sheep’s Head were rumored never to speak at all once they had passed out of the novitiate, communicating only with hand signs.
Wolfhere opened his lantern and blew out its flame. Together, they trudged in pale moonlight past the ripe-smelling dung heap. A fence scraped her thigh and she smelled the rich tang of plants as they walked alongside the garden. Beyond this enclosure stood half a dozen squat beehives. Finally, they came in among the outbuildings: stables, kitchen, bakery, kiln, and forge—dark and empty at this hour except for a single form sitting beside the dull red coals, tending the fire. The hostel of the monks of St. Servitius was famous, Wolfhere had told her, not just because some of them lived here the winter through, despite snow and ice and bitter cold, but also because they kept a blacksmith.
As they came up to the guest house, a young monk, unhooded, hurried out the door and away to the right, toward the infirmary. His reddish-pale hair and coltish gait reminded Hanna abruptly and painfully of her milk brother Ivar.
Was he well? Had he forgiven her for choosing to stay with Liath rather than go with him?
Wolfhere sighed suddenly and squared his shoulders. Shaken out of her thoughts, Hanna heard shrill voices from the entryway. They mounted the wood steps into the entry chamber, now lit by four candles, and right into the middle of an argument.
2
“THIS guest house is reserved,” said a sallow man Hanna immediately identified as the insufferable manservant to the presbyter, “for those who arrive on horseback. It is quite impossible that these common soldiers be stationed here.”
“But the prisoners—” This objection, raised by the inoffensive guest-master, was quelled at once by the presbyter himself, who now stepped out of the shadows.
“I will not let my rest be disturbed by their shuffling and muttering,” said the presbyter, his Wendish marred by a thick accent. He had a thin, aristocratic voice, fully as imperious as that of the nobles she had observed during her weeks attending King Henry’s progress. But of course he, too, was a man of noble birth; with a perpetually curled-down lip, soft, white hands, and the imposingly portly demeanor of a man who feasts more days than not, one could never have mistaken him for a farmer or a hard-working craftsman. “The two guards who are standing watch over the prisoners must be moved. If that means the prisoners must be moved, so be it.”
Wolfhere responded blandly. “Are you suggesting Biscop Antonia and Brother Heribert be quartered in the stables with the servants?”
The presbyter’s eyes flared, and he looked mightily irritated, as if he suspected Wolfhere of baiting him. “I am suggesting, Eagle, that you and those you are responsible for do not disturb my rest.”
“Your rest is of supreme importance to me, Your Honor,” said Wolfhere with no apparent irony, “but I swore to King Henry of Wendar and Varre that I would deliver Biscop Antonia and her cleric to the palace of the skopos, Her Holiness Clementia. This building—” he gestured to stone walls and tight shutters,“—grants me a measure of security. You know, of course, that Biscop Antonia is accused of sorcery and might be capable of any foul act.”
The presbyter grunted. “All the more reason to remove her from this guest house.” He signed to his manservant, turned with a swirl of rich fabric, and climbed the steps into the gloom above where another servant waited to light him to his chamber.
Wolfhere turned to the guest-master. “My apologies for inconveniencing you again, good brother. Have you any other chamber that might serve our purpose?”
The guest-master glanced at the presbyter’s manservant, who sniffed audibly, steepled his fingers, and tapped his thumbs together impatiently. “At times it happens that a brother or traveler is disturbed by evil spirits who have insinuated themselves into his mind, and at those times we must isolate him in a locked chamber in the infirmary until an effusion of herbs or a healing can extricate the creature from his body. It is not what I would choose for a biscop, even one accused of such, um, undertakings, but—” He hesitated, perhaps fearing that Wolfhere’s reaction would be as explosive as that of the presbyter, but in the end he glanced again toward the manservant. Worse to insult a presbyter than one of King Henry’s Eagles, especially considering—Hanna reminded herself—that they were not in Henry’s kingdom now.