Free Night Blooming by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Page A

he led Rakoczy past the brewers.
    Rakoczy interpreted the vocation of the former soldiers as being the result of some disabling injury rather than a sudden awakening of fervor, but he said, “A great credit to Sant’ Martin.”
    “Amen,” said Fratre Berengarius. “That passage to your right—take it.”
    Rakoczy suspected that he was being taken the long way around to his destination, and assumed that Fratre Berengarius had been asked to do this, either to delay his arrival, or to show him the extent of the monastery. This right-turning path led past a cloister and a chapter house, then along the flank of the Cathedral toward a two-story building with a Roman arch over the center entrance. Rakoczy went toward the entrance, Fratre Berengarius immediately behind him. “Is this the collegium?”
    “It’s the scriptorium; the collegium is behind it, facing the petitioners’ court. Go through the arch and across the courtyard. The next building is the collegium. It is larger and has more rooms than the scriptorium. Two or three will be assigned to you. Your manservant will be taken there with your belongings. A bed will be prepared for him in the corridor, to guard you.” Fratre Berengarius made this sound like an unearned honor. “He is a servant, isn’t he—not a slave?”
    “I have no slaves,” said Rakoczy with utter finality. “And he will occupy my rooms with me. He can guard me better from inside than from the hallway.”
    Fratre Berengarius had no answer for this idiosyncracy, attributing it to Rakoczy’s foreignness; he took advantage of their entry into the courtyard to change the subject. “You will see there are three passages. The one on the left is for Fratres, the others are for Magnati, Illustri, Sublimi, and Potenti. Bellatori are housed in the dormitory, when they are admitted here at all.”
    Rakoczy smiled. “Which am I to use?”
    Fratre Berengarius stared at him. “Which—?”
    “Passage,” Rakoczy said patiently.
    “The central one, at least today. The Abbott will say which you are to use in future.” He indicated a staircase. “Your quarters are that way. I’ll show you where when the Abbott is done with you.”
    “Thank you,” said Rakoczy, making note of the narrowness of the flight, and the steepness. “You must go single file up and down those stairs.”
    “As our Rule requires,” Fratre Berengarius agreed.
    Rakoczy nodded. “Sant’ Benedict said little about staircases.”
    “Our Rule enlarges his dicta,” said the monk, pointing to a corridor on their left. “If you will turn here?”
    “Of course,” said Rakoczy, doing it. The long passage was two stories high, the upper level galleried with a series of small arches. The sounds of many hushed voices made the air rush and whisper like the waves of the sea.
    “There is an alcove ahead. Enter it,” said Fratre Berengarius.
    The alcove proved to be large, the size of a reception room, but lacking a fourth wall and a door. There was a long trestle table set up across it, and half-a-dozen men in habits stood around it, frowning down on a swath of silk marked with red dye; Rakoczy recognized the object of their scrutiny as an Imperial map from the Court of the Emperor of China. It was at least two hundred years old; age made it fragile, something the monks took into consideration in their handling of it.
    “Sublime Abbott,” said Fratre Berengarius in a respectfully lowered voice.
    A white-haired man whose tonsure no longer needed the barber’s efforts to maintain looked up, blinking as those with short sight were inclined to do; he approached Rakoczy in a friendly manner, not overly familiar, but genial enough. He stopped an arm’s length from the new arrival. “So you’re Rakoczy. Your reputation precedes you.” He came up to Rakoczy’s chin, an angular man with snapping blue-green eyes, a large nose, and hairy ears.
    “And you are Alcuin of York?” Rakoczy inquired, knowing it was possible that this man