Chapter 28      Loneliness and Doubt

 

 

 

The barn was as cold and quiet inside as only a barn can be.  Breath hung in brief white clouds.  Outside, as if miles away, the sheep in the enclosure bleated for fresh fodder and water, while around them, the rustic structures of the town stood empty, their inhabitants having wisely deserted in the middle of the night, fearing the wrath of knights betrayed.  Stewart announced he would tend the animals.  He stirred his cook pot thoroughly to prevent the contents from sticking in his absence, then slogged through the snowy mud toward their cries.  He was, thought Alexander, an uncommonly compassionate young man.

The barn had the lifeless quality of an old shell.  A sickly luminosity drifting through the open door utterly failed to brighten the interior.  Moreover, it enhanced the desolation.  Alexander had never felt so low.  His insides had a hollowness which he could neither ignore nor alleviate.  The feeling muted his senses.  The damp cold brought no discomfort.  Stewart's thickening pot of millet porridge had no smell.  He stirred the contents.  It looked unfamiliar.  He  attempted to stretch, and gave up the attempt.  The necessary energy would not come.  He was weary, in mind, body and spirit.

Just beyond the door, he could see the marks where Edward had trussed the corpses by their wrists and dragged them away behind his war horse.  The smith was utilitarian.   He lived life with no warming mantle.  He stood in cold defiance of whatever life threw at him.  In outlook, he was a beast of the field.  Fortune, be it cold or warm, simply came, and he endured or basked, as befit the occasion.  If only he, Alexander, could be so self contained.

The barn intruded again.  The smudgy odor of burnt oil and straw lingered.  The odor oppressed him.  He looked about for distraction, but the only activity centered around the stall where Aubrey and James lay.  Cadmon knelt between them, ministering to them as would a physician.  Cadmon looked up momentarily, but wanted nothing.  His face, too, betrayed weariness.

Cadmon consulted his book of cures.  Alexander knew what it was, for the knight had shown it to him days before, when times were happier.  The book, titled Chirurgia, meaning "surgery," Cadmon had said, contained beautiful, though indecipherable, Latin words, and many pictures of wounds, ailments and treatments.  At the time, it had looked impressive.  Now, it bore a pitiful shield between the lives of his comrades and sallow death.  Cadmon's expression reflected similar feelings.

Burke nodded off in the corner of the stall, sitting hunched beneath a blanket like an aged nun.  All their good spirits had flown, or rather crept away.  Again, he envied the stoicism of the smith.  He needed some of Edward's spiritual mortar.

And the world needed color.  Night darkness still hung in the air like soot.  Would the yellow sun not shine?  If ever a morning needed a honey sun, it was this.  But the thick, low clouds betrayed not the slightest inclination of breaking up.  This pale glow fell from a winter sun.

Alexander let his fingers feel the texture of an ancient post.  He pressed his head into the cool, unyielding wood.  Any sensation was welcome, any confinement by wall or channel, anything to give support or direction.  He did not want to think.  Yet, his thoughts fell through his disintegrating will like water through coarse weave.  The thought.  Once it had entered, it would not go.  It would not go until it had been recognized.  To exorcise the beast, he must confront it, stare it in the face, hear it out, defy it if he could, make peace with it if he must, suffer its triumph if all else failed.  It stood at his soul's center, draped and hooded, not evil, not good, but inexorable, like death.  Pull back your wrapping, he said to it.  Pull it away, for I would see you.

The thought had just begun uncloaking itself when Stewart entered.  Alexander welcomed the intrusion.  Stewart's feet were covered with mud and straw.  With a tired look at his shoes, Stewart nodded an absent minded greeting and stomped his feet almost soundlessly in the straw to remove the worst of the mud.  He scraped at it with a stick for a few minutes.

When Stewart looked up, Alexander again met his eyes.  Alexander felt a more profound comradeship with the boy than he had ever been aware of before.  It made sense they should feel kinship.  After all, they had lived together beneath the roof of Norbury for years, had shared the drudge duties of servants, had longed for -- What had they longed for?  Release?  Security?  No.  It was more fundamental.  They had longed for a sense of belonging, something beyond membership, something of permanence, something worthy.  Now, Stewart had caught the hem of a girl's dress, while he had caught the hem of a surcoat.  Both struggled to hang on.

"I stirred the porridge," Alexander said.

"Thanks."

Stewart completed his shoe cleaning task with a few handfuls of straw, which he twisted into a brush and scrubbed at the stitching.  Most of the mud slid away.  The remainder smoothed into the stitches and laps, to dry and flake away later.  Stewart stood and glanced at the interior of the barn.  Alexander could see the breath draw from his body.

"It is not as we imagined it, is it?" said Alexander softly.

Stewart smiled ruefully.

"I feel really low, Stewart.  I do not mind telling you."

Stewart looked at him thoughtfully, then said, "He is the same as ever."

"What?" responded Alexander, startled.

"He has not changed.  Only your vantage has changed."

"Who has not changed?"

"Cadmon."

Stewart was speaking of the Thought!  The very thing he had been avoiding.  It alarmed and relieved him all at once.  He looked hard at the young man.  Stewart saw much.  He stayed back and watched while others acted.  Truly, he saw deep into things.  He was right in counting him a friend.

Alexander asked, "How do you know my thoughts so well?"

"It is not so difficult.  I did not speak until the burden seemed so heavy I could not but help you carry it."

Alexander laughed dryly.  The boy could talk almost as well as Chaplain!  Perhaps that was his true calling.  But, aside from all that, he spoke the truth.  Glancing in Cadmon's direction, Alexander saw the knight tending the wounded men, attentively, not as a commander, but as a friend.

Alexander shook his head.  "This has the feel of...."  He did not finish, but shrugged as if to say the thought could not be translated into words.

"May I try?" asked Stewart.

Glancing again at the knight, Alexander nodded.

Stewart said forthrightly, "Your saint has shown himself as a man."

Considering the words, Alexander started to shake his head, but paused, considered, and in the end, had to agree.  That said the thing neatly.  He had looked up to Cadmon as much more than a mere man, something between an angel and Charlemagne.  It had been unfair.

"He is the most extraordinary man I have ever met," said Stewart in all seriousness, forgetting the possible humorous effect of his words in contrast to his years.  But Alexander did not laugh.  He listened.

Stewart continued, "Cadmon is as much a looking glass as anything.  We look into him and see what we wish to see.  We see the heroes of Greece and the knights of troubadour tales, and he lived up to those ideals in every way, because he only reflected.  Now, we see some of his own troubled light.  You, I think, know much more than any of us about his past, Edward excepted.  I think you find him an exemplar in all things knightly, and to have him set upon, remain hidden in a hovel like this, well, it tarnishes your ideal."

"It is not just the staying in a hovel," responded Alexander.  "The humblest hovel can have more virtue in it than the grandest manor if the right people are in it."

Stewart stared keenly at Alexander's introspection.

"It is not this place," repeated Alexander emphatically.  "I would be as proud to be here as any place on earth.  But, the air has gone wrong.  A dead child buried under the floor.  You understand what I mean?"

Stewart nodded but said nothing.  Alexander gathered momentum.

"Cadmon is the most virtuous man I have ever met.  Everyone says so.  He is the best swordsman, the best axeman, and I dare say the best at any knightly skill.  He speaks to Chaplain as a tutor to a student and to Edward as a beloved comrade in arms.  How can a plain man gather such respect from people so different?  A plain man could not.  That is so.  Cadmon is a giant, and if he were but known, the troubadours would sing him 'round winter hearths in every manor on both sides of the channel.

"But with all that," he paused, finding words to cover the thoughts and feelings which coursed through his brain without need of words.  "He has shown us a hollowness, like a beautiful apple you buy and only discover the dark spot at the back after you have paid your half penny."

Alexander interrupted, "Is it so bad as that?"

"Oh, I do not know, Stewart.  It tires me to think and I have made myself sick over it.  Sometimes I wonder:  Where has my knight gone?"

"Come on, Alexander!" said Stewart with surprising vehemence, admonishing him under his breath.  "What has he done so dark?  Lay it out in plain sight.  You bemoan him like a young man seeing his maiden with another.  Lay it out!"

Alexander blinked.  This was a Stewart he had never met before.  But he was right in his criticism.  Cadmon did not belong to him in any sense, really.  What right had he to feel betrayed?  Yes, he would tell Stewart.  Let him judge the evidence.  Let him render a verdict.  He felt odd confidence in the intuition of the young man.  He would be guided by his advice.

"You are right, Stewart.  Perhaps I condemn him without fair trial.  I will lay it before you.  Examine what I say and tell me if I am wrong."

Stewart assumed a position of attentiveness.  The light striking his young face fell in such a way that one half of it lay in shadow, while the lighted side seemed over illuminated, diffuse with brightness, possessing exactly the young and ancient look of a half full moon.

"Our path here seems faint-hearted at best," said Alexander.  "If we are truly hiding, we are doing a drocken job of it.  And this is the worst."  He let his eyes traverse the length of the barn to the wounded men.  "We are ambushed by a gang of thieves in a town where we should have never been in the first place.  Two of our friends are grievously wounded and may well die, two are off on a chase and may not return.  Our message for the king is no closer to him now than when we were in Norbury.  And, well, I just...."  His voice trailed away.

"And?" prompted Stewart.

"Stewart, it is a botched job.  That is all I can see in it.  A botched job."

Stewart frowned thoughtfully.  It was a while before he spoke.

"You know more of our purpose than any of us, and the merits of it you can best say."

"The merit is high.  I have no want of that.  It is the way of doing I find fault with."

"How so?"

"Cadmon is a great knight, but he seems distracted.  He has tragedy about him.  I fear that tragedy has made his judgment err."

Stewart turned his head to one side.

"No, you would not have heard," Alexander responded to the unspoken question.  "He has told no one but Edward, myself, and Lord William."

"Yet, I am not surprised," said Stewart.  "Can you tell me?"

"If everything did not seem so black, I would never betray a trust, but....  No!  Even now, I cannot.  Stewart, it is hopeless."

"Never, Alexander.  Never.  Do you mind a purse of advice?"

"I welcome it, Stewart.  If you can see farther than I, tell me.  I am at wit's end with grief.  I have lost my knight."

"Do not mourn him yet.  Did he not warn that Morkin would be trouble by the second night, and did it not come to pass that way?"

Alexander nodded.

"My advice is to wait.  He has many secrets.  Perhaps the revealing of one will ease the stain from his surcoat."

"Am I the only one who has felt doubts about him?"

Stewart shrugged.  "I have heard Thomas wonder aloud the wisdom of staying in this place, of our pied trail from Norbury, but he is content to place his trust in Cadmon.  If Thomas sees no reason to doubt, that is judgment worth considering."

Alexander looked at Stewart gratefully.  He felt lighter inside.  The talking out of the problem had done him good.  "Thanks, Stewart," he said.  "You are a good friend."

Stewart smiled boyishly, but his eyes lingered, a little of the man he would become peeping through.

"Your porridge!" cried Alexander with alarm.  The pot was erupting with enormous geysers of meal.

Stewart shot to the fire and plunged the spoon deep, pulling some of the hotter porridge into the center of the pot and pouring additional milk into the mix.  He scraped the spoon against the bottom and withdrew it, anxiously examining the end.  No charred matter stuck to the wood.

"It is good," he said with relief.  "Breakfast is not burnt.  If only Aubrey and James could share it."

Stewart looked up, suddenly.  Cadmon stood above him wearing a benign expression and holding two bowls.

"A bit in each, please," he said.  "We have two wounded men who need to recover their strength."

At first not understanding the meaning, Stewart dipped into the pot, then realized the import.  "They are well?" he exclaimed.

Cadmon smiled.  "I would not say well, but certainly awake and hungry."

"Alexander!" Stewart shouted.  "Do you hear?  They are awake!"

Alexander smiled, the deep furrows in his brow lifting.  He hurried with Stewart to the straw mattresses where the men lay.  Burke looked up from tending them with youthful joy.  "They have slept off their hurts like drunken men!" he said.

Both men rested in half reclined positions, looking pale and worn, but happy.  The side of James' face was blue eclipsed with bruise, but he looked pleasant nonetheless.  Simply being alive after all he had gone through could have that effect on any man, even James, it seemed.  Alexander said greetings to them both. 

Mid afternoon saw the sky fracture into clouds, accompanied by a change in wind direction and a rise in temperature.  They opened both ends of the barn and let the bowels of the structure benefit by the change in weather.

Alexander stepped outside, keeping to the wall where brown clumps of grass provided mud free footing.  He climbed a split rail fence around the small paddock where Stewart had lodged the milk ewe and sat on the top rail.  He watched the clouds sweep around above him, at least three distinct layers of them, and wondered about Edward and Thomas.  They had been gone long enough to have overtaken the villains and dealt with them as they deserved.  Where were they?  Only their absence cast a shadow on the day.

The wind kept up and the air grew warmer still.  Veins of slate blue began edging the clouds apart.  An hour before vespers, the clouds broke loose from one another, and drifted away with increasing speed.  Spots of sunlight tumbled over the ground like young squirrels in spring.  The sky cleared, first to blue gray, then to a hazy blue, and the sun took on a steady light, dimmed by winter, but as welcome as a hearth on a frozen evening.  Warm air rattled bare branches in a friendly way.

On such an afternoon, surely nothing could have happened to Edward and Thomas.  He fervently hoped so, anyway.  As selfish as it may be, he wanted nothing to spoil his hard-won euphoria.  He took a walk a short way into the woods.  Sunlight dappled his upturned face.

A sound!  It came from the opposite side of the village.  Automatically, he sprinted toward the barn to give warning and take up arms, but before he reached the structure, two horses emerged from the woods.  Edward and Thomas!  A third horse, a palfrey, broke into the clearing, carrying upon his graceful back a soiled but well-clothed man of some bearing.

"They are back!" Alexander shouted.  "Edward and Thomas are back!  A stranger is with them."

Stewart poked his head out the door, surveyed, then withdrew.  Alexander ran toward his comrades.  Burke followed close on his heels.

Behind Edward's and Thomas's powerful war horses, led by ropes tied in sturdy loops about their necks, were a double line of villains, Morkin in front, his right hand wrapped in a bloody rag.  Several of the others had minor wounds.  Behind the tethered ruffians walked a dismal procession of villagers, perhaps twenty in all, several pairs of whom carried litters between them with more seriously wounded men upon them.  It looked like a Roman triumph!

Cadmon met them near the sheep clearing.  He wore no weapon but a thick dagger in a scabbard.  He gave a brief nod to the stranger, then addressed his friends.  He greeted them, surveyed their spoils, congratulated them on their victory, told of Aubrey's and James's progress.  He then returned his attention to the stranger.

"His name is Geoffrey," offered Thomas.

Cadmon welcomed the stranger by name.  Everyone watched Cadmon's movements attentively.  He seemed familiar with the stranger, or to at least have expected his appearance.  The newcomer dismounted.  He and Cadmon embraced, and everyone exchanged glances.  What did this portend?

Edward, his face as cold and impassive as an ingot, climbed down from his horse and strode purposefully to Morkin.  There was abiding anger in his stride.  The villain, puffing and sweating from his forced march behind the horse, nevertheless, glared malevolently at Edward.  Morkin's eyes betrayed no fear, only hatred, a blackness which disturbed Alexander, even at the distance from which he watched.  They were empty eyes, empty of restraint or compassion, eyes capable of anything.

Edward drew a thick-bladed utility knife from a wood sheath, and with a sudden powerful movement, cut the tether a couple of feet behind Morkin.  Now, only Morkin stood tied to the horse.  Edward examined the villain as he would have examined a piece of inferior workmanship.  Morkin matched him, look for look.  Neither blinked.  The remainder of Morkin's men followed the activity, bewildered and fearful.  Edward returned to his horse, taking the reins from Thomas, who remained mounted.

"I take my leave," announced the smith.  He spoke to no one in particular.  He asked no permission.  He simply stated.

The glade was quiet, the afternoon light, copper and cool, slanted in over the tree tops.  All human sound ceased.  Edward's saddle creaked under his weight as he remounted.  With his cinder blasted beard and wild tangle of hair, he could have been a Norse chieftain.  Alexander studied him admiringly.  The smith would have made a good one.

Cadmon walked forward to stand a couple of paces off Edward's left side.

"Where are you off, Edward?" he asked.

"I am bound for justice, Cadmon."  His voice rumbled like thunder or distant surf.

"Morkin?"

"He is mine."

Cadmon weighed the words, the tone, the eyes of the speaker.  He considered much, Alexander concluded, before he simply nodded his head in assent and said, "We have mutton for feast tonight, Edward.  You will join us?"

"Presently, Cadmon.  I would be most glad of it."

Cadmon took a pace back, signaling he had nothing more to say.  Edward nudged his horse, and the beast shambled forward, gently rocking Edward's hauberk, sword and axe like sailor's tack would move with the swells under a channel boat.  Thomas's horse started to follow, but Thomas kept his destrier in check.  Behind Edward's horse, Morkin followed, as he must.  Edward headed between two rough structures on the far side of the green, passed between them, and out of sight and hearing.  He had a destination in mind.

Stewart and Alexander approached Thomas.

"What is he going to do, Thomas?" asked Stewart.

"God knows."

Cadmon joined them.

Thomas said, "We found this bunch a few miles from here.  They scattered like plummers when we rode in.  We captured some, roped them in a clearing.  When we started riding out, each time I looked back, I saw more people slipping into parade behind us.  Women, children, grandmothers.  They followed us in of their own free will, to see what will happen to their men and elders, I suppose."

Cadmon glanced at the dirty assembly of villains impassively.  The men were of two breeds.  One carefully watched the ground, fearful of looking up.  The other stared about like lunatics in wide-eyed excitement.  However, none looked along the recent path of Morkin.  To stare after him was, perhaps, expressing sufficient sympathy as to follow.

"What shall we do with them?" asked Thomas.  "They are too many to watch."

Cadmon considered but a moment.  "Release the followers to tend their animals.  We will keep the tethered ones just as they are until we leave.  Detail the women to care for them."

Alexander scanned the faces behind the horses and found not a one he would have trusted at his back for a moment.  He approved of Cadmon's decision.  Trussed up as they were, they made good hostages, and the old women would not let their men die.  But Morkin?  No, they had turned their backs on him already.

Thomas looked uncomfortable.  Cadmon looked to him inquiringly.  Thomas said, "Edward is a very strong man."

Cadmon nodded, waited.

"I know myself," Thomas said thoughtfully, "that if I am wronged, I must strike early, while my temper is hot, else time and distance will soften my resolve.  Edward is not such a man.  His temper and will are cold iron.  Time and distance have no effect on his fury."

Cadmon looked Thomas in the eyes, not with the intent, Alexander thought, of intimidating or impressing will, but with the intent of communicating more fully than voice alone.  "Edward has always been as you say, but I have never known him unjust.  I support whatever decision he makes, for unless time has wrought a different man, his actions weigh equal to Morkin's deed."

Cadmon walked toward the prisoners.  His calmly spoken words still rang in the air.  He, too, possessed something of iron in his resolve.  Thomas watched him, then dismounted, gave his reins to Burke, and followed the senior knight.

"You people of Bridris," Cadmon said to the mob, "are guilty of murder, betrayal and inhospitality.  Your reputation is well known in this region.  If I commanded each of you die for your deeds, there would not be a single innocent put to death.  But I have not the taste for so much blood today.  Instead, you will tend these prisoners until we depart.  Care for them well, or we will spill them.  The choice is yours."

Cadmon stood patiently for a reply.  Whispers trickled through the mob for half a minute, then an aged man stood forward, begged forgiveness and agreed to the knight's just terms in the name of them all.  Additionally, he promised loyalty to Cadmon for his mercy forever afterwards.  A bittersweet smile flickered across Cadmon's face at the last remark, but he feigned to accept the promise in all seriousness.

In short order, Cadmon had the prisoners trussed to suit him and wedged them into a smokehouse with the door securely nailed shut with enough timber and spikes that any attempt to remove them would wake the deaf and the dead.  The smokehouse vents, narrow slitted windows near the eves, were swung open for transfer of food and night buckets.  Cadmon ordered that only one person was to tend the prisoners at a time and that a lamp would burn ten feet outside each wall all night.  The old man groveled and agreed, and the thieves scurried into their nests.

Afterwards, Burke and Stewart selected a lamb from the herd, dispatched him swiftly, and together dressed the carcass for the spit within a quarter hour.  The town made generous gifts of grain, roots, nuts and sundry dried fruits, principally apples, and Stewart had a difficult time deciding what to cook.  In the end, he piled everything but the meat into his big pot and set it to simmering.  Whatever it would taste like, it would be nourishing.