The Divine Sacrifice Page 9

  I waited for Arthur to consent, but personally I was pleased. During my long stay at the abbey some years before, I was assigned one of the spare, cold cells built for the monachi. Coroticus did not refuse himself the pleasures of the flesh nor the comfort and luxury his station could afford.

  While I mused about these things, Arthur nodded his acceptance of the arrangements. Bedevere, as was his habit, said nothing, deferring as I did to Arthur.

  One of the servants came and showed us to our chambers. We crawled onto our respective furs, silence reigning in the room. I trusted Bedevere; I had always trusted him. He was renowned for his loyalty, his discretion. But he was a quiet man, and he seemed to brood over some old tragedy. I was much closer to his fellow, Kay.

  I lay there awake for a long while. After a few moments, I could hear Bedevere’s even breathing. Outside, an owl spoke to me across the night. A whiff of the damp lands surrounding the abbey drifted through the hall, as the sounds of the servants cleaning up receded into silence. For a while.

  And then I sat up. A scuffing sound came from the great hall, quiet, almost too quiet to be heard.

  Someone was slipping through the feasting room, someone who didn’t want to be heard. I looked across the room to the dark lump that was Bedevere, but he was yet asleep.

  Then, the door to our chamber creaked open.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I threw back the fur covering me with my one arm and slid myself into the darkest corner of the chamber. Bedevere was snoring, loudly. I strained to catch the sound of our intruder. Doing so made me feel a little silly. It could simply be one of the monachi. Or one of the servants. But something told me it was not. Something spoke to me and said that the explanation was not that simple.

  The wooden door to the chamber eased open. Had I not been awake, I would have heard nothing. A dark shadow of a figure entered, almost floating above the floor, it seemed, edging up to my bed and kneeling down beside where I should have been.

  Before I could discern his intentions, another dark figure flew through the air in a single move, sweeping the intruder from the floor and against the wooden wall with a crash.

  “Quickly,” I heard Bedevere say. “Who are you and what do you want?” So much for thinking he was asleep.

  I saw the vague outline of a candle on a table. Searching blindly in my pouch, I found my fire-making materials and, deftly though I had but one arm, had the candle lit.

  The intruder had not answered Bedevere, but his heavy breathing filled the room.

  In the dim glow of the candle, I saw, finally, who it was. Llynfann, my favorite little thief. “Bedevere! Release him!”

  My old friend turned, and even in the dim candlelight I could see disbelief on his face. “Malgwyn, he stole in here to do you some mischief!”

  “I did not, my lord,” Llynfann said with a quiver in his voice. “I came to fetch him.”

  “Fetch me for whom, Llynfann?”

  “The lady, Malgwyn. The lady of the woods.”

  Bedevere looked at me in confusion. “The lady of the woods” was a name applied to my cousin Guinevere, Arthur’s consort. Those, like Llynfann, who lived in the forest knew her only as “the lady of the woods.” During the events surrounding Eleonore’s death, it had been Llynfann who guided Kay and myself through a midnight-blackened forest. Aye, without Llynfann and his bandit leader, my old friend Gareth, that affair would have ended quite differently.

  “Why should Guinevere wish to see you now?”

  I frowned. “She is my cousin. We are friends. The question should be, why does she want to see me so urgently that she used Llynfann to fetch me?”

  “As you like,” Bedevere conceded. “But why?”

  “The only way to find out is to answer her call.”

  “Shall I alert Arthur?”

  I considered the thought. “No, better that I find out what she needs first. If need be, we can easily send for him. Come, let’s be away.”

  Fetching our horses almost took longer than the journey to Guinevere’s cottage. A candle burned in the window, glowing dully through the wavy Roman glass. I suspected that the builder had robbed an old Roman villa for the glass as few craftsmen made it now. Llynfann had accompanied us at my request. I did not know but that his services would be required again.

  The door swung open and a flash of long blond hair showed as my cousin motioned us in. Once inside, she hugged me and nodded to Bedevere. “Malgwyn, why comes Bedevere with you?”

  “We were staying in the same chamber, and your messenger was not as quiet as you would have hoped him to be.”

  She laughed, and I relaxed. If she could find something to laugh at, then perhaps her summons was not that serious.

  “Why have you called for me, cousin?”

  At that she stopped laughing, took on a somber look. She glanced again to Bedevere from the corner of her eye.

  “You may say whatever you wish. Bedevere is assisting me in this affair.”

  Guinevere nodded. “I feel awkward, Malgwyn. I had a visitor earlier, the woman Rhiannon. She believes that you will try to blame the monachus’s death on her.”

  “Why does she think that?”

  “She believes that Patrick will insist on her guilt. After all, she admitted to arguing with Elafius, the old fool.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Did you know him?”

  “Of course. I often visit the women’s community. I still have friends there. And I know many of the monachi. Elafius was a disagreeable man.”

  “And why did Rhiannon seek you out?”

  Guinevere shrugged. “I had met her recently. After you questioned her, when she returned to the community, one of the other women told her that we were cousins.”

  “What did she want with you?”

  “What do you think? She wished me to plead her case before you.”

  “She told me she did not do this thing; why would she need her case pled before anyone?”

  “She fears Patrick.”

  I nodded. “She should. Patrick and I have decided to ally ourselves in this matter.”

  At that, Guinevere’s eyes showed little surprise, telling me that word had already spread of our alliance. “Malgwyn, have you lost what little is left of your mind? You do not even believe in the Christ, and you’ve joined with the most famous episcopus in all Brittania.”

  “Cousin, this affair is not simple. Elafius was not your typical monachus. And I do not believe it is as simple as Rhiannon killing him over some religious difference. Too many questions are left unanswered by that explanation.” I held up a hand as Guinevere began to protest. “Guinevere, Coroticus is hiding something. Lauhiir is hiding something. I’m told that a monachus named Gwilym is hiding something. I need to understand the religion in all of this, Pelagianism, the divine sacrifice, Rhiannon’s role. I am likely to miss such important information because of my ignorance. Patrick can help prevent that.”

  My beautiful cousin shook her head, sending her long, flowing hair flying about her. “Malgwyn, I do love thee. You are very nearly all the family that I have left. And I respect your skill in these matters. But I fear you have made an error by joining forces with Patrick.”

  Something in the look in her eye put another thought in my mind. “Is that your fear, or Arthur’s?”

  “Both.” And the voice surprised both Bedevere and myself. Arthur.

  “But we left you at—”

  Arthur smiled. “Do you think that I am incapable of moving quietly?”

  I shook my head. That had been one of Arthur’s special talents as a military leader. He could move great bodies of horse more quietly than anyone I knew. Slipping from the abbey would have been no more trouble for him than arising in the morning. “But you seemed earlier not to desire a visit with Guinevere.”

  Guinevere cut him a glance, a hint of irritation flashing in her eyes.

  “Can not a Rigotamos have even a few secrets from his closest aides?”

  I hung my he
ad, appropriately chastised.

  He stepped out from the next room and lowered himself into a wooden chair. “I am worried, Malgwyn. Guinevere speaks for us both. While I believe in the Christ, you know and all know that I have not been a friend of the church. Patrick knows this too. And he has an undying hatred of nobility. Tyranni he calls us.”

  “Rigotamos, I serve you. But I serve truth as well. You had no hand in the death of Elafius. Guinevere had no hand in it. Bedevere had no hand in it. And whether we like it or not, Patrick had no hand in it. I believe that Patrick seeks the truth as well. I do not understand Pelagianism, and I do not understand what causes men to act so passionately about questions that cannot, to my mind, ever be resolved.

  “Yet, I sense that this affair is tightly bound up with religion. I do not know how. It is for his understanding of such things that I turned to Patrick.”

  “Malgwyn, he would like nothing better than to embarrass me. By embarrassing you he accomplishes the same purpose.” Arthur was pleading with me. He knew that on some things I could not be commanded.

  “So, it was really you that arranged for my cousin’s summons.”

  “No, Malgwyn,” Guinevere interrupted me. “Rhiannon did come to me. She is afraid that she will be blamed for this thing. And she is afraid that Patrick’s beliefs will sway him against her.”

  This was something new for me. When I had sought the answers to other affairs, I had sometimes had people try to sway me one way or the other. But never had this many people pulled me in so many different directions.

  My stump of an arm ached, but I did not know if it were from the old wound or the lateness of the hour. I was disappointed in my cousin and Arthur. They should know that I would seek only the truth. Something inside of me sought only what actually happened in an affair, not what others would wish had happened. I did not know where that great drive, that great urge, sprang from. I only knew that it controlled me.

  I sat down and hung my head. “Rhiannon may be innocent. And she may not be. I do not yet have enough information to clear her or convict her.” I raised my head and focused my eyes on Arthur and Guinevere. “But you both know that I will follow the evidence wherever it takes me. I did not especially care for Elafius when I lived at Ynys-witrin, but no man deserves to die before his time. Death is too much a part of our lives as it is. And murder, to me, is a disturbance of the true order of life. Someone helping it along is an insult to that life.

  “And mark this. I will be the one deciding who is to blame in this affair. Not Patrick. Not Lauhiir. Not Guinevere. Not Arthur.”

  Arthur’s power seemed to rise up in his throat and threaten to choke him. But, with Guinevere’s hand on his shoulder, he swallowed deeply and nodded.

  “You knew he was stubborn when you first went to him, Arthur,” Guinevere softly chided.

  “Aye, he is stubborn. And carries himself as an unruly pup. But—”

  “But,” Bedevere concluded, “he is a master at these things. Do I have to remind you?”

  “Be of good cheer, Rigotamos,” I said after a moment. “At least your crown is not resting on this.”

  That showed how little I understood about the powers at work in this matter.

  I awoke the next morning, still as muddled in my thinking as I had been the night before. Bedevere was already up and about his business. I sat up and leaned my back against the wall. Had I made a mistake in allying Patrick to my cause? He was most certainly a man of great biases. I had made the move almost in desperation. But such a move, once made, could not be retracted.

  With a shake of my head, I used my one hand to push myself to my feet. Self-pity was something that I thought I had put behind me. Obviously there was no cure for such a disease.

  The sun had already risen in the east. I could smell food cooking in the kitchen building. A cock crowed somewhere in the distance. It was a lonely call, less a greeting to the new day than a plaintive cry, one that sent a shiver of memory along my back.

  My earlier sojourn at the abbey was a dark time in my history. The loss of my arm had seemed the last rung on a ladder that led only down. And I had blamed Arthur for leaving me alive when I had nothing to live for. I closed my eyes and shook my shaggy old head. Falling into self-pity was a danger for me, an ever-present one. Merlin, my friend and companion of recent months, sometimes gave me a concoction of valerian root to forestall these bouts of melancholy. It helped in some strange way, and Merlin took no small pleasure in that, as I was always teasing him about his “cures.”

  But in truth, the only cure for my inner doubts and fears was my daughter, Mariam. A smile lit my face as I pictured her bright features.

  “You are the man Malgwyn?”

  The voice startled me from my reverie. I looked to the door and saw a truly ancient monachus, his face as wrinkled as Merlin’s, his towering but spare frame clothed in the same brown cloth sheltering his fellows.

  “Do I know you?” I straightened and tried to place his face, but to no avail. He had not been among the brothers when I had lived with them.

  He shook his head as a tired smile marked his lips. “No, our lives have not yet overlapped.” With a grace unexpected in one his age, he slid further into the room. “I have been told that you seek the murderer of the monachus Elafius.”

  I nodded. “And you are … ?”

  “I am Gwilym.”

  My eyebrows rose automatically.

  “You have heard of me then.”

  “Your name has been mentioned in my inquiries.” The sparkle in his eyes intrigued me. I had not expected him to present himself so readily. Indeed, a part of me half expected him to be at the heart of whatever was yet unspoken in this affair. “I have been told that you are whispering Pelagianism in the community.”

  Those lively eyes sparked more brightly. I guessed that he had not expected so direct a question. Ofttimes, I felt that we danced around too much, attempting politeness at the expense of truth.

  “You do not waste time.”

  “I am not as young as I used to be. Wasting time is the privilege of the young. So, do you champion Pelagianism?”

  “Might I sit? If you are old, then I am ancient.”

  I motioned to a chair.

  He moved slower than Patrick, but with just as much grace. “Yes, I have spoken in favor of Pelagianism. To say so causes little harm since you would have discovered it eventually anyway. I would not call it ‘whispering,’ though. I made no secret of it.”

  His candor brought a smile to my lips. Would that more of those I questioned were so forthright. “You know that Pelagianism has been denounced by the church fathers in Rome?”

  “Of course,” he conceded, still wearing that same smile. “But that does not keep me from believing as I like.”

  “Did you argue with Elafius?”

  “Of course. Elafius was a strong opponent of Pelagianism.” He said that term as if it rolled strangely off his tongue.

  I searched my mind, trying to remember what I could about Pelagianism. Something about free will and original sin. I had committed too many sins in my life to remember the first. But I had spent enough days at the abbey to know that my sins were not the ones in question when it came to Pelagianism. He and Augustine were perpetually at odds. But even Augustine granted that Pelagius had been a likable man, even a good man. He had disappeared when I was but a child, some said to the far eastern lands.

  For me, this was so much idiocy. But I knew that religious men took such things seriously. Was it enough to spark a murder? I still could not fathom that. Especially the manner of Elafius’s death. It was such a haphazard, clumsy affair. I believed that it had taken two people to kill the old monachus. At least. One to hold him down. One to pour the yew extract in his mouth. But why go to so much trouble? And then breaking his neck. Obviously the manner of his death was important. But why? Was there something symbolic about the yew extract that I was not seeing? Why not a simple sword? Why not a dagger across his throat?
>
  And who stood to profit from the old monachus’s death? Murder was always about profit of some kind. It was always about gain.

  “Do you have other questions?”

  Startled, I realized that I had forgotten about Gwilym. I judged him to be about Patrick’s age, perhaps a bit older. It was odd for such an ancient monachus to arrive at the abbey.

  “Whence came you here?”

  “Gaul,” he answered quickly, too quickly, I thought. Gaul. First Rhiannon and now Gwilym. I wondered.

  “Were you acquainted with the new abbess in Gaul? You both arrived here about the same time.”

  “I have known Rhiannon all of her life. Her father was a close friend of mine.”

  “So you came from Braga as well.”

  He shook his old, bald head. “I came originally from near unto Caermarthen as did Rhiannon’s father. But when the first colonies went to Brittany, we went as well. Our paths diverged. He chose the life of a farmer and I chose service to God. Later, I returned to Braga and learned that Rhiannon was also serving God. She was offered the post here, and as I have no family of my own, I came with her.”

  “So you have spent your life in Gaul?”

  “I have traveled much in my life. But it would seem that all those roads led only to my patria, the land of my birth. I find a certain comfort in that.”

  “What say you of Rhiannon’s insistence on women serving in the divine sacrifice?” I doubted that she might still be involved in this affair, yet I worried that I was thinking with my loins and not my brain.

  Gwilym took a deep breath. “My understanding of the Christ and his teachings says that women should be prized as much as any man. Yea, there are yet manuscripts which say that the Magdalene was a disciple, and the one most beloved by the Christ. If this be so, how can it then be said that He would have denied women a role in His faith?”

  The one answer ready on my tongue was that women were a lesser sort, a weaker sort than men, but I had seen too much in my life to really believe that.

  “Since you have traveled so widely and yet still hold views that Rome has long since denounced, can I presume that you knew Pelagius? Perhaps studied under him?”