CHAPTER 32

The two hooded figures trod carefully down the hill. The first snow of winter had clothed the island in white, and a mantle of ice had all but locked up the frozen waters of its inland sea. Brother Boniface raised his head and savored the biting air. Ahead of them the sky was showing he first late signs of dawn, as the days ran down to the very depths of the year.

“Christmas on Avalon,” he breathed ecstatically. “And this year for the first time we may celebrate in full. Could there be any greater blessing on our faith?”

“Perhaps.” The voice of his brother monk was dubious. To Giorgio, there was only one city in the world where Christ’s day could properly be kept. Rome! The very thought was a stabbing pain. When would he see the City of God again?

“But we do good work here, brother, do we not?” Boniface asked anxiously, watching his companion’s sallow face. “We have done as we were ordered, won the Lady’s favor and gained permission for Christian worship on the Sacred Isle. With each month we have made some small advance. Surely we fulfill God’s will?”

“Perhaps,” Giorgio said again indifferently. The warm olive bloom he had when he arrived had left him, and his handsome face looked lifeless and gray. From October onward, his hands and bare sandaled feet had been inflamed with chilblains, now cracked and bleeding painfully into the snow.

Onward, thought Boniface, onward in the name of the Lord. Aloud he said, “The first Christmas on Avalon is a cause for joy in heaven. How many centuries has this been a pagan shrine? And now we can celebrate the birth of our Lord in this place.”

He lifted his head and threw back his hood, careless of the cold gnawing at his ears.

“By next Christmas, brother,” he said jovially, “we shall have a true congregation here, I do not doubt. A small one, to be sure, and mainly composed of women, for we can only work with what we have to hand. But Saint Paul himself did not disdain to work with females, even though they are God’s lesser kind. He used them widely in the founding of the Church. So may we use these benighted women, and help them redeem the lower nature that God ordained for them. God’s purpose will prevail.”

He looked around him with an expansive sigh. On all sides, a million tiny glimmers of the rising dawn had set the snow on fire. In the apple groves of the hillside below the frost had made a delicate tracery on every branch, and the trees held up silvery fingers to the sky. Yet even now the faint scent of blossom lingered on the hill, and the white doves called from the shelter of the pines. This was a place of magic, Boniface acknowledged humbly, his soul aglow. And he and Giorgio were bringing it to the Lord.

Giorgio watched moodily out of the corner of his eye. Living in close confinement with the fair-faced, open-souled Boniface had taught the Italian to read his fellow monk’s every thought. He loves this place, and he feels the joy of the Lord, thought Giorgio. Whereas I pine for Rome, and the warm darkness behind the altar where Tomaso waited with his kisses like nectarine...

At once he felt ashamed. Resolutely he put away all his resentment of the burning cold, the torture of his poor bare sandaled feet, the deadness of the fingers huddled in his sleeves, and forced a smile. “How shall we keep Christ’s feast?”

“A fast on the eve, I think,” Boniface replied seriously, “and a vigil all night, to remember the Virgin’s pains. After that we should hold a High Mass for all who come.”

Giorgio could not keep the sourness from his soul. “Who will come to Christ’s Mass on Avalon?”

“One or two of the young maidens, to be sure,” said Boniface confidently. “Those who have visited us for spiritual counsel over time. And a few of the Lake villagers too, that is my hope. Some of them seem ready to move out of their darkness into the light of God’s day.”

“You think so?”

Giorgio had yet to see in the young maidens who visited their cell any signs of spiritual growth. He knew, even if Boniface did not, that the fair, blue-eyed youth and his dark companion with tawny skin were an intriguing challenge to these girls. To Goddess worshipers, men vowed to celibacy were merely men who had never known the love their Great One gave. The spirit, he feared, had little to do with it. It was their bodies these women were interested in.

As the Great Whore herself most definitely was not, Giorgio mused. Since the hard-won audience with the Lady of the Lake, neither of them had seen her again. If their two holy fathers, plotting from London and Rome, had expected the Lady to take either of them to her bed, they had never been more wrong. Yet the old always love to blame the young. In the eyes of London and Rome, Giorgio knew, he and Boniface had failed.

And Giorgio saw, too, that Boniface had no idea of this. His hopes for the Sacred Isle did not end with Christ’s Mass. He saw himself on Avalon till the end of his life, winning souls for God. Plans for the coming feast and for the years ahead tumbled from his lips as they walked along. Giorgio had to nudge him to draw his attention to a figure coming down the path.

Stepping firmly toward them through the snow was Nemue, the chief maiden of Avalon and the Lady’s closest aide. Like her mistress, she wore only light drifting robes, and though her head was covered, her arms were bare. She must have some enchantment against the cold. And how old was she? Giorgio wondered for the thousandth time. He would go on wondering, he knew, for Nemue’s small, secret face gave nothing away.

“Greetings,” she said shortly. Her voice was like the croak of the night fowl on the marsh. “You go to the jetty too?”

They looked at her in surprise. “No, lady, why?” said Boniface, with sudden concern.

In reply she pointed to the edge of the lake below. At the foot of the Tor, the grass sloped down to a stone-built causeway protruding out into the frozen water like a monster of the deep drowsing half-submerged. Tying up at the jetty as Nemue spoke was one of the shallow Lake boats that plied to and fro between the island and the countryside around. Today, only the goodwill of the boatmen had brought it through the frozen mere. In a matter of hours, Avalon would be locked in ice.

Disembarking from the boat were two men in black gowns. “Monks of our order?” Boniface gasped.

“You did not know?” The sound of Nemue’s voice at his elbow was half a laugh, half a sigh.

“What are they doing here?” cried Boniface.

His pale skin had taken on a flush of distress. He set off running down to the jetty as he spoke.

Giorgio followed him as fast as he dared. Could it be—? He wanted to laugh and cheer, to do cartwheels in the snow. But getting safely down the frozen slope was the main task now.

“Hail, brothers!” Boniface cried as he approached, raising his hand. There was no answering salutation from the dock. Instead they met the hard-faced stare of two older men.

“You’re Boniface? We’re here to take your place,” said the taller one abruptly, as they came up. His lean, unpleasant face was set in an attitude of cold disregard, and his small pale eyes looked out of a deep well of contempt within. Reaching into his baggage, he retrieved a scroll and pressed it into Boniface’s hand.

“Orders from the Father Abbot in London. You’re relieved of the mission here, and sent back right away. You”—he nodded to Giorgio, and gestured to the boat—“you’re to go with him back to London, then on to your church in Rome. The Lake’s freezing, but you’ll get out today.”

Rome! Giorgio burst into floods of ecstatic tears. Now he would see Tomaso and the city of his heart once again. There was nothing here to hold them back. They would be packed and gone within an hour.

“Joy to you!” he wept.

Beside him Boniface stood dry-eyed, numb with shock. “Who are you?” he mouthed.

The tall monk moved his mouth into a smile. “I’m Brother Sylvester, and this is Iachimo.”

The monk beside him nodded with an empty grin. Short and squat, he had a coarse, hostile air, and a deep scar marked his bare tonsured head. He pointed to his colleague. “Syl-vester,” he said. He turned the mocking finger toward himself. “Ia-chi-mo,” he repeated, lingering on each sound.

Boniface flushed, but tried to smile. “Well, brothers, we surely do not need to leave today. If you’re coming to join us, you’ll need our help and guidance here. We have done much—”

“But alas, not enough.” Sylvester’s cold voice cut through the desperate plea. “Read your orders, friend.” He widened his eyes unpleasantly. “They do not come from me. Like you, I am only God’s messenger in this place. And the message is—you leave.”

Boniface gasped. Grief overwhelmed him, and he could not speak.

“Say no more,” came Nemue’s voice from behind. “The Lady has seen it written in the stars. Your time here is at an end.”

Her sigh echoed through Avalon and beyond. Its echo reached the two young monks through the glistening air. Boniface stood still. Before him stretched the white expanse of the frozen Lake, its surface broken with ragged clumps of frost-encrusted reeds. High overhead the starving marsh fowl mourned in the thin air, while a few searched hopelessly for food along the ice. And suddenly Boniface knew that he, too, was doomed to fly away from Avalon, and to starve forever like the birds, eternally grieving for what he had lost.