Maid Of Midnight

“From the looks of you, young man, it appears that your mission is a perilous one.”

“Nay, no one knows me here. I believe the brigands set on me by chance.”

“They were robbers, then?”

“What else?” Ranulf hesitated, trying to remember the scene. It seemed far away and unclear. He continued slowly, “Though I believe they were too well mounted and outfitted to be common thieves. The man who struck me wore armor as fine as any I’ve seen.”

Francis gave a little shudder. “There are still outlaw knights in this land. ’Tis a sad remnant of the holy effort to free the blessed sites of Christendom from the heathen.”

His attempt to recollect the incident on the road was making Ranulf feel sick. His earlier visions of the golden-haired angel were much more pleasant, but although they’d seemed as real as the feel of the mattress straw prickling his neck, they had evidently been conjured up by his delirium. “So no woman has been tending me?” he asked with a little sigh.

The monk seemed to scrunch up his face. Then he made a quick sign of the cross and said loudly, “No. There’s no woman at St. Gabriel Abbey.”

It was just as well, Ranulf mused as the round little monk stood and bustled out of the room. In his dream, Ranulf remembered kissing her—his angel-vision. He’d been confused for a moment, thinking that he was with Diana again, taking his leave, promising her to find Dragon. Ranulf closed his eyes, remembering. His angel may have been a phantom, but the petal-soft touch of her lips still lingered on his mouth.

Most of the buildings at St. Gabriel were made of fieldstone, with roofs neatly thatched by the brothers’ own hands. They formed a tidy quadrangle broken on one end by the graveyard that stood next to the monastery church. Isolated as it was in the wooded hills nearly two hours’ walk from Beauville, the closest town, the church claimed no parishioners other than the brothers themselves, which suited them fine. That meant that they didn’t have to deal with a procession of priests sent by the local bishop to meddle in their routine.

It also meant that few visitors came to explore the abbey grounds and take note of the odd building nestled in the woods about a quarter of a mile to the west of the church. The monks called the building the work shed, though it was far larger than any structure that would normally fit that term. It was as tall as the bell tower of the church, and, other than the barn, which housed the abbey’s two mules, three milk cows and assorted other animals, it was the only building at St. Gabriel made entirely of wood.

Bridget avoided the work shed whenever possible. It was where the monks usually carried out their tinkerings, which was what the monks affectionately called their inventing efforts. One never knew what variety of odor or sound would be emanating from the ramshackle structure.

But when Francis failed to bring her a report on the progress of the patient, her curiosity made her seek the monk out at his afternoon labors.

Francis and Ebert had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the shed for the past fortnight. They’d traded their duties in the gardens with other monks so that they could continue work on their latest creation, which was a refinement of the water clock Ebert had invented.

She’d be the first to admit that the monks’ ingenuity had made life easier at the monastery. She now had a spit that turned the meat automatically, driven by a device in the wall of the fireplace that turned with the heat of the fire. Of course, before the scheme had been perfected, she’d seen the ruin of at least half a dozen perfectly good roasts.

Bridget shook her head as she approached the building and was greeted with a barrage of loud bangs. She opened one of the huge wooden double doors and peered inside. Ebert was bent over his clock, a contraption consisting of small cups fastened around the edges of a wheel. Ebert was tall and thin. Even stooped over, his head rose above Brother Francis.

As Bridget entered, the clanging from the far end of the shed stopped. It had come from near the monks’ special pride, a large furnace they had dubbed a blast fire because of the peculiar roar of the air through it and the force of the heat it generated.

Sometimes Bridget found herself drawn into the monks’ plans, in spite of a resolve to stay detached, but today she had other things on her mind. She walked directly over to Francis and asked, “How is the patient? Has the poultice helped his wound?”

Francis’s smile looked a little nervous. “It may have helped too well, child. He’s regained his senses and had questions this morning about being nursed by a woman. A golden angel, he called you.”

Bridget grinned. “I’ve always tried to tell you that I’m much holier than you give me credit for.”

“’Tis not a cause for mirth, Bridget. It could have been disastrous, but I think I’ve convinced him that you were but a fever dream.”

Bridget’s grin faded. A fever dream. That was all she could ever be to anyone from outside of these walls. “If the fever’s broken, he should have a new poultice,” she said.

Ebert had straightened up to his full height and towered over both his fellow monk and Bridget. “Francis is right, Bridget. You must not be seen by the stranger again.”

“Make up the poultice and I’ll take it to him,” Francis added.

Bridget felt an unaccustomed prickle of resentment. She had thought of little else but the wounded stranger all day long, and it seemed unfair that now that he had regained his senses she must hide herself away. “I should see the progress of the wound myself,” she argued. “It will tell me what herbs to add to his cure.”

Both monks regarded her gravely, shaking their heads. “There’s no way for you to see him, child,” Francis said gently. “I’ll give you a fair report.”

Bridget bit her lip. The monks at the far end of the shed were watching the conversation. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the brothers apart at a distance in their identical habits, but she could somehow always recognize Brother Cyril. He was not plump like Francis, nor tall like Ebert, but there was just something about him, the way he moved, his energy and determination. Whereas most of the order were relaxed and happy, Cyril always seemed to be moving impatiently from one task to another. Bridget suspected that much less work would get done at the abbey without Brother Cyril’s pushing.

Cyril and two other monks were working around the big furnace, but Bridget knew that including them in the debate would not help her cause. The monks were united in trying to protect her from the outside world.

“Is he of right mind?” she asked Francis. “Has he told you about himself?”

“Aye, he tells me his name is Ranulf.”

“’Tis a Saxon name.”

“Aye. He’s English.”

Bridget hid a little shiver of excitement. The man was not only from outside the walls of the abbey, he was from outside of Normandy itself. He had traveled the world, crossed the water. She had a fierce desire to talk with him. An hour or two in his company would no doubt teach her more than a month in the abbey library. It was impossible, of course. But at least she could see the man again.

“I’d like to check the wound myself,” she said. “I’ll wait until he’s in a sound sleep tonight, then I’ll just slip in and change the dressing. If I’m gentle, he shouldn’t wake.”

“’Tis a foolish risk to run for the sake of a stranger,” Ebert observed.

“The stranger is nonetheless one of God’s children, is he not, Brother Francis?” She appealed to the monk she knew to have the least resistance to her pleadings.

“Aye, but…”

“And therefore deserves no less care than the worthiest of saints. Is that not in the Rule?”

Though every waking minute of the Cistercian life was supposedly ordered by the sacred set of laws called the Rule, none of the monks of St. Gabriel were too well versed on exactly what the holy proclamation contained. Francis and Ebert exchanged a bewildered look, and Bridget seized her advantage.

“’Tis so, exactly,” she exclaimed. “I’ve read it myself, and as a dutiful, if unofficial, daughter of this abbey, it’s my place to abide by its teachings. I’ll go to the stranger tonight while he’s in a sound sleep. If he wakes up, he’ll think it’s his angel come to see him once again.”

“Child, we cannot—” Francis began.

“It’s settled, then,” Bridget interrupted, and before he could continue his argument, she spun around and skipped lightly out of the building.

Henri LeClerc, Baron of Darmaux and Mordin Castles, sat in his high-ceilinged receiving chamber at Darmaux and glared at the man in front of him as if he were some kind of bug that had crawled out from one of the cracks in the drafty stone wall.

“I didn’t tell you to kill the man, Guise,” he said. “I told you to find out why he was asking directions to St. Gabriel.”

Charles Guise, sheriff of Beauville, did not flinch at the baron’s scathing tones. “You were right, mi-lord. The man was obviously a fighter. He put up more resistance than we had anticipated and I thought it best to get rid of him at once.”

“You thought?” LeClerc stood and walked toward the sheriff until his odd violet eyes were only inches from Guise’s. “You’re not in my service to think, Guise. Now we have no idea what this English knight was doing here or how much he knew about the abbey.”

The sheriff met LeClerc’s gaze. “As I said, he was a warrior. We may not have been able to take him alive.”

“Five of you? Against an unarmed knight? Do I have nothing but mewling babes working for me?”

Spit from the baron’s vehement words flew into Guise’s face, but the sheriff appeared to take no notice. “I’m sorry milord is displeased,” he said.

LeClerc made a sound of exasperation and stalked back to his chair, sitting down heavily. “We should probably talk to our holy friend at the abbey to find out if he knows why the man was headed there.”

“It’s some time before our monthly meeting, and we’ve agreed not to approach him on the abbey grounds.”