Frankish Burgundy
716 AD
“B
ertrada! Come quick!”
Arledge felt hands on him, then heard a gasp.
“My Lord, what has happened to you?”
The voice was familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. He was lifted from his saddle, a jolt of pain causing him to groan, the shock giving him the strength to open his eyes a sliver. Through the blur, he recognized the blacksmith from earlier in the day, the man carrying him into his humble home. He was placed on a bed as the man’s wife, Bertrada, rushed into the room, crying out.
“Oh my!”
“He’s near death. Fetch the priest!”
“But he’s gone! He said so on Sunday that he’d be gone for two weeks.”
“Curse that man for never being around! He is as much a man of God as Pierre’s mule. I swear he’s the Devil’s lips on God’s Earth, that one!”
Arledge reached under his robes, struggling to retrieve the Bible, but his arms collapsed. “Look,” he managed, and the blacksmith eyed him for a moment before realizing what he was asking. He reluctantly reached under the blood-soaked robes then his eyes widened in surprise.
“What’s this now?” He retrieved the Bible from the saddlebags and he and his wife both cried out. “It’s the Bible those fools showed everyone yesterday!”
Arledge shook his head, forcing out the words that must be said in his final moments. “No, those men, they killed my friends, they stole their Bible. This is another copy. No one knows of it. Only my abbot and me. It must be…”
His strength was gone, the one last vital sentence necessary to see the safe return of the Bible to his home unuttered. If only he had not passed out, if only his horse hadn’t brought him to the last place they had experienced the kindness of strangers, rather than the abbey where brothers such as himself resided.
All he could do was trust that these simple, kind people, would figure it out for themselves. He had to trust that this was the work of God, and that some day, the Bible would find its way into the hands of the worthy.
His last breath sighed from his body, and a moment of fear struck him.
I’m sorry for failing you, My Lord. Please forgive me.
