Brotherhood of Shades

“They are busy,” the senior monk snapped. “He is not heavy; move him yourself.”

The younger monk nodded his head in a small bow of deference to his senior and turned reluctantly to lift the sodden child from the filthy floor. The bundle was indeed light and the monk easily carried the boy to the door, kicking it open and stepping out into the cool blue of the late summer evening. The clean air rushed at him and he felt dizzy as he breathed in and filled his lungs, trying to clear the stench of death from his nostrils. He had no desire to rush across the courtyard of the abbey to the huts which acted as a hospital for those who had a faint chance of survival.

His scrawny load did not burden him and so he walked first to the main gate to find the boy whose duty it was to watch it. Finding him asleep, he kicked the slumped figure hard to wake him before ordering the gates locked for the night. That done, he started back to the huts.

The air in here was worse than in the mortuary as the sisters refilled the censers all day, burning the sticky yellow incense to drive off the vapours believed to carry the pestilence. Incense had always made the monk sicken and, no matter how many years he spent surrounded by its choking grip, he always felt bile rise as the smoke leaked into his lungs, and this time was no exception.

“Sister Goodman, take this boy from me,” he called into the darkness.

From the shadows a figure emerged, robed in grey smoke from the golden ball swinging from the chain in her hands. As she drew closer, her pale, round face became visible and he could see how the last few years in this diseased place had taken its toll on her. She looked as though a great sorrow had pulled her features down until she had no muscles left in her face to fashion a smile. He understood this and wondered for a brief moment when he himself had last smiled, but in times of plague there was little to smile about.

This plague had stalked the land for too many years, tearing the country into random divisions, not of rich and poor but of healthy and afflicted. Here, in these shabby buildings, lay a constant stream of country folk in varying stages of the disease, most too ill to even groan in their suffering. Those who were still alive enough to call out in pain were dosed heavily with an opium tincture to quieten them and ease their suffering. A mattress was never empty for long as another unfortunate came to fill the one left by the dead; as soon as someone had recovered enough to walk, they were sent back to whatever flyblown village they had crawled in from.

But at least it was better in here than in the hut where the child’s mother lay. That was a place of lost hope and final prayers. At least some left these gruesome buildings, if a miracle visited and the disease fled a body, as it sometimes did under the care of the sisters.

“How far is he gone?” the sister asked.

“He has no buboes yet, but he burns hard with fever,” he replied.

“Then there is still a faint chance for him.” Sister Goodman looked around for a space on the crowded floor. “Over there.” She pointed to a small, clear patch against the far wall.

The monk carried the boy over and lowered him to the grey straw-stuffed mattress before brushing himself down and turning back to the sister.

“Alive or dead, Father Dominic will call for him,” he said.

“Does he have enough assistants to grieve for all of these?” She waved her hand through the foetid darkness at the bundled shapes just visible in the dim light.

“We still have a number of mothers who have lost all; they grieve for every child that passes,” he sighed. “The deceased will be grieved for by friends and villagers; anyone left will be taken on by Father Dominic and his order.” “What will happen if the king wishes to destroy the monasteries? I have heard he means to do so,” she asked.

“Father Dominic has a plan to deal with such a threat. He has not told us of the details yet, but I have heard it promises some hope.”

“Would that it works,” the sister added. “Help is greatly needed here, and I have lost another sister today.”

“Plague?”

Sister Goodman snorted, a small noise which may once have passed for a laugh, but her face did not match it in expression.

“No, she fled through the orchards and over the rear walls. I came in this morn and found she had taken the dress from one of the dead and had left her habit in torn strips on the floor beside the body. She is a fool as she will succumb for sure now that she has left God’s protection and will have no one to grieve for her as she is alone in the world – but she was young and listened to no argument anyway.” She breathed a deep and tired sigh.

“It must be near your time to leave, sister. When do you depart to care for the hidden texts?”

“In three days,” she said with relief. “The first are already in place. I and the remaining sisters will all arrive before the end of the month.”

“You shall be sorely missed here.” He patted her sturdy arm.

“No.” She shrugged his hand away. “There are others to care for these wretched souls. I have more than served the Lord here, and so it is time for a cleaner place. Are you finished, father? I must attend to my work before more die unnoticed.”

“No, that is all, sister.” He walked back towards the door. “Do not forget about the boy – try to keep him alive through the fever; it will be one less to find grievers for.”

“I shall do my best, but his fate is now the will of the Lord.”

The monk made his way back across the courtyard and through the cloisters to the main building. Entering through the north door, he passed through the dark and silent chapel into the labyrinth of cells beyond. He knocked gently on Father Dominic’s door.

“Enter,” a deep voice came from within.

Father Dominic was a big man, large in height, and weight, with fingers so darkened by inks that they resembled blood sausages. Before he had been called to take up holy orders he had worked with metal and his broad forearms carried many red scars from molten splashes. He surprised those who knew him by producing the most delicate and beautiful illuminated manuscripts. The atmosphere in his room was heavy with the oily smell of paint and a few flecks of gold leaf always decorated his thick beard from each time he licked his gilding brush.

“The hour is late, father. I was not expecting a visitor,” the big man said without looking up.

“I shall not interrupt you for long,” the monk replied. “I have come to tell you of a boy who is in the huts. He has no family and will need three to pass him over should he die.”

Father Dominic nodded slowly and rested his huge hands in his lap. They were speckled with deep cobalt blue from the document lying on the oak desk next to him.

“I am busy.” He turned back to his work. “The sisters would have told me of this in due time. Is there something else you would ask of me?”

The young monk looked at his feet nervously. “I am curious about your plan, father,” he mumbled. “Your plan to save us from the Dissolution, to save us from King Henry’s destructive designs for the monasteries.”

Father Dominic laughed, a huge rolling chuckle that seemed to shake the room.

“I cannot deflect a king from his will, and so my plan will not save us from the Dissolution. King Henry’s men will take this building just as they have taken so many others across the land; it is simply a matter of time. I can only do my best to prevent all our good work from being wasted.”

“Our good work,” repeated the monk. “Will we be able to stay here?”

Father Dominic’s face fell once more. “Our work to pass these poor lost souls over is the most important duty we perform. Has this slipped from your mind?” the big man said.

“No, it is just . . . How shall we live if the abbey is taken from us?” the young monk stammered.

“That is not my worry. My primary concern is to deal with how they shall die –” he gestured towards the small window and the huts outside “– and what happens after, not how you shall live. There are matters of greater importance than food and drink for two dozen monks. Now I have much to do, if you will excuse me.”

Father Dominic reached across his work and picked up a small brown notebook before dismissing the young monk with a wave of his plate-sized hands.

Disturbed by his encounter with Father Dominic, the monk walked out of the sleeping abbey and, instead of following the footpath back to the cloisters, he passed on through the garden gates into the orchard. The air there was sweet and heavy with the fermenting smell of windfall apples. Too many were busy with the sick to pick all of the fruit this year and they fell from the boughs to rest in the uncut grass and turn brown in the sun. The day had already rolled over into night, but still the air hummed with the lazy buzz of a thousand well-fed wasps.

A sharp, silver half-moon lit his way through the trees as he followed a faint trail in the grass, crushed by the passing of the fleeing sister. Dew-soaked grass bled into his robe, making it swipe cold across his legs as he walked. Continuing all the way to the rear wall of the orchard, he stopped at a spot where he knew the latest runaway must have climbed over. The wall was not tall here, little more than shoulder-high to the monk; it had been built to keep out sheep, not keep people in.

Sliding his feet into a gap in the lower stones, he lifted himself up enough to rest his folded arms in the scuffed and torn moss on the top of the wall. He could just make out the zigzag path in the distance that the fleeing girl, unsure of which direction to take, must have made. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms close to each other, lacing his fingers together, and prayed so hard for the runaway girl that the bones in his hands cracked in protest.

Chapter Two – The Boy with No Name

Central London – Now

He woke in the ambulance; not that he realised where he was, just the cold white light and the noise, and all around him the terrible din of the sirens.

“Why am I tied down?” he asked, or at least he tried to, but the words seemed to stumble and fail as they reached his lips.

“It’s OK,” a loud voice boomed above the noise. “You’re on your way to hospital. Don’t pull at your safety belt, kid. You just lie still.”

He tried to focus on the voice, but the colours and sounds smudged and blurred and a massive and crushing pain in his chest suddenly erased the world.