Free Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg Page A

spirits in its garth…I doubted any house in Navronne could boast such bounty.
    “Many in our brotherhood have found it so. I have discovered my own destiny here—against every expectation of my life.”
    His words left an offer hanging in the air, something more generous than tavern friendships. More honest. I was gratified, and a bit astonished, at such trust. But if I probed deeper, he would rightly expect to do the same. And that could not happen. Of all the protections I had built over the years, the surest was to keep my secrets close.
    Fumbling about for a new topic, I hobbled across a cart track that led from the lay brothers’ reach southward along the Kay. The view of the wide, shallow river and the mist-shrouded valley, bound by forested ridges and the high mountains far to the south, recalled Jullian’s odd tidbit. “Tell me, Brother, why would anyone be building a lighthouse so far from the sea?”
    Even the broad River Yaronal that separated the kingdom from the brutish herdsmen to the east could be no nearer than two hundred fifty quellae, and likely unnavigable at that nearest point. Indeed, I wasn’t certain people built lighthouses on rivers, much less in green vales like these.
    My inquiry, posed in all innocence, halted Brother Gildas in midstride. “Who spoke to you of a lighthouse?”
    One never reveals one’s sources when queried with such severity. “Mmm…I don’t recall. So many people come in and out of the infirmary.”
    After a moment, he smiled and nudged me onward. “Well, of course, you haven’t yet seen the church windows on a day when the sun shines, else you’d grasp the reference. Come now, tell me more of Palinur.”
    A nice recovery, but I didn’t believe him in the slightest.
    As we crested a slight rise between the cart track and the infirmary garth, a cloaked horseman barreled up the track through the increasing drizzle, passing just behind us. He vanished in the cluster of buildings behind the lay brothers’ reach.
    Brother Gildas halted again, glancing after the rider and then to the infirmary, squatting peacefully with its back to the river. “Can you make it the rest of the way on your own, Valen? The hour is Sext, and I’ve duties before prayers.”
    “Certainly. The air has done me good. I was beginning to feel like a sheep in a pen, shut up in that infirmary.”
    With an admonition to inform Brother Badger of my weakness at the cloister garth, Gildas hurried off, not in the straightest path to the church, but in the same direction as the rider, soon lost to sight as well. A departure as enigmatic as his excuse. No bells had rung for the holy Hour. This place seemed to nurture mysteries: lighthouses, savage murders, an intelligent abbot who welcomed vagabonds like me, and a spirit in the cloister garth who did not.
    Monastery life moved slowly, so I understood. Though abbots might be required to heed the winds of politics, their flocks of holy brothers sat outside of the stream of time and events, wrapped up in scholarship that spanned centuries and prayer and contemplation that spanned the boundaries of earth and heaven. So why, of a sudden, did I feel as if I were being rushed down a dark alley by a gang of smiling jacklegs who would pick my pockets and plant a shiv in my spleen before dawn? I hobbled quickly toward the infirmary.

Chapter 5
    V esper bells clanged and hammered. The monks were gone to prayers again, the lingering draft from their departure my only company in the quiet infirmary. Robierre had left me a brimming posset, dosed with extra honey in apology for sending me out walking too strenuously.
    In truth my leg felt better recovered from the day’s adventure than my spirit. I could not shake my thoughts free of the murdered monk. Had this Horach truly made himself known to me? Surely of all residents of this abbey, I knew the least that might ease a tormented soul. But a man left himself open to mortal peril did he ignore the demands of the