Free Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg

Gram finds more appetite at supper. Brother Cellarer will send better wine for your master.”
    “Jerome!” my companion called across the stone-floored vastness.
    “What can I do for you, Brother Gildas?” said the ruddy-faced monk as he emptied a wooden bowl of chopped cabbage into his pot. With the efficiency of long practice, he set the cavernous bowl aside, snatched a long-handled spoon from a rack on the soot-blackened wall, and poked at the cabbage that sizzled and spattered in his pot.
    “Have you a bit of something mild and sustaining for our newest aspirant?” said Gildas, steadying me as I sank onto a pine bench beside the door. “I fear I’ve overtaxed him on his first excursion from the infirmary.”
    Brother Jerome spun around, his wooden spoon raised as if it were a hierarch’s crozier, ready to assert his holy authority in this domain. “The supplicant who brought the Cartamandua maps?”
    The whole world seemed to stop and stare just then, even the departing layman, who paused in the half-open doorway across the room and lifted his red hood slightly as if to see me better.
    “Aye, the same. Still recovering from his injuries and unfed this day. My misjudgment.” Gildas returned his sober scrutiny to me. “And I beg forgiveness for that,” he said quietly. “Unworthy of me to assume…uh…that your strength was greater than you showed.”
    I waved off his concern. My leg and back had contributed naught to my weakness that I could judge. Yet if I told Gildas what I had experienced, surely nothing good would come of it. The monks would call it a sign of Iero’s displeasure, pile on penances or rituals to reform me, and likely send me away. If some god or spirit or magical being did live within that garth, it must—
    The likely truth stung my skull like a pebble from a sling. The shrine…the font…the murdered Brother Horach! Some people said that spirits loosed in savage torment would linger in the place of death, become revenants. Had I somehow invoked his wrath…or his benevolence? The contrary nature of the encounter left it open to myriad interpretations.
    The world moved on again. The monks were back to chopping and grinding. The beardless servant vanished through the door. Forgoing fruitless speculation, I breathed deep, pleased to smell the garlic and to feel the steam that hissed from the wilted cabbage as Brother Jerome tossed aside his spoon and emptied a crock of liquid into his pot.
    Brother Gildas filled a wooden cup from a nearby barrel. I drained it before his hand had moved away. Lovely ale, new made, not old. “Iero’s grace,” I said, and he brought me another.
    “I’ve a barley loaf and syfling cheese will suit a fragile constitution,” said Brother Jerome, once he had tamed his soup. Thick gray hair fringed his leathery tonsure. He rummaged briskly in the flat basket and extracted a wrapped bundle and a small crock. “Sent back from the guesthouse untouched. Father Prior says Lord Stearc’s secretary Gram is a sickly sort and I thought to bolster him, but all the fellow took this morning was Robierre’s strengthening tea.”
    Ah, Gram—the mournful fellow who’d consulted me about the maps. He’d had an unhealthy cast to his skin. A lord’s secretary.
    The loaf was chewy where it should be and tender everywhere else, and the soft cheese tasted of almonds. Unflinching, I ate every morsel of both and buried my disturbance in the homely comforts of a well-run kitchen. Jerome and his minions, as with all who worked in kitchens and brew-houses, wielded power I understood.
    Brother Gildas and I bade the kitchen staff farewell and trudged slowly past the lay brother’s reach in a light rain. I felt almost myself again. Likely Brother Gildas’s estimate of my collapse had been right, naught but hunger and healing. I’d had little experience of common sickness.
    “Gillarine seems a vastly holy place,” I said. Healthy grain, plump vegetables, untainted sheep,