Nikki pulled at Alf’s hair. White, he wrote on his tablet. And at Alf’s coat: Blue. And his own: Red.
Alf swallowed laughter, for Nikki’s eyes were mischievous.
No, he said in his mind; scored through the last and waited, pen poised.
Green! Nikki cried, snatching the pen and writing it in a jubilant scrawl.
Alf’s mirth won free. Yes, green, he said, and well you knew it. Now what is it?
Coat, Nikki answered with his pen. I wear—him?
It, Alf corrected him.
He nodded, brows knit, forcing himself to remember. Words were a wonder and a delight, but they were hard to keep hold of, shifting and changing as quickly and inexplicably as people’s faces. He thought tiredness at Alf, and the other nodded. Enough now. Go and rest.
Not rest. The picture in his mind was of the stable and the three kittens there. He clasped Alf’s neck in a quick embrace and left him, skipping as Anna had taught him to do.
Alf tidied the nursery that did duty as a schoolroom, thinking of the one in Saint Ruan’s with its grey walls and its hard benches and its rows of novices in their brown robes.
Brother Osric, who had been master there when he left, was Abbot now; young Richard had taken the mastership. Though he would not be so young after all—thirty-five? forty? He had been a very hellion when he entered the abbey, fifth son of a poor baron, determined in his contempt for the monks with their pious mumblings. But under the contempt there had been a brain, and a reluctant fascination for the words which the monks had mumbled.
They had sent him a gift through Bishop Aylmer in Rome: his own Gloria Dei, copied and illuminated by the best hands in Saint Ruan’s, with a commentary over which both Osric and Richard had labored for long years. It lay now in his clothes chest, its beauty hidden in the plain cover that Brother Edgar had made for it to turn aside thieves, nor had he opened it since it came to him.
His will reached, so, and it lay in his hands. He sat at the worktable and opened it. His fingers trembled a little. It was even more wonderful than he had remembered.
There folded within was the letter that had come with it, written in Osric’s minute precise hand. News of the abbey, small things, this Brother ill and that Brother recovered, a splendid apple harvest and enough mead to make everyone tipsy on Saint Ruan’s Day; Duke Robert had given a magnificent bequest, and Lord Morfan was maintaining that the southwest corner of the oak forest had belonged to his family since King William’s day. And among all of this, the lines that with the release from his vows had sent Alf from Jerusalem: “Already the younger ones make a legend of what you did, and tell the tale of the Archangel Michael who came to be Our Lady’s champion and slew the Abbot’s slayer in her Chapel; and there is the sword hung over the altar as proof of it. You yourself we’ve let them forget, all of us old dodderers, because you asked it, nay demanded it, in the letter the King of Rhiyana sent to us; and because, the world being what it is, maybe it was wisest. We put it in the Necrology: ‘Dead on the winter solstice in the tenth year of the reign of His Majesty, Richard called Coeur-de-Lion: Alfred, foundling, novice, monk and priest of Saint Ruan’s upon Ynys Witrin; master of the school, author of the Gloria Dei, Doctor misteriosus. May the peace of the Lord rest upon him.’”
He smoothed the parchment, staring at it, not seeing it. The pain was piercing, as he had known it would be. But not as it had been before. This he could bear. It was pain, not agony. And half of it he had had to force with a flood of memory.
In spite of himself, he was healing. He looked at the book that he had written, and he saw not the cloister but the schoolroom of House Akestas. The words of the monk from Anglia seemed strangely distant. Someone else had written them long years ago, someone he no longer knew. Even the person who had wept when the letter came, only a year past, was not the one who read it now. This new Alfred had no tears to spare for a man five years dead, or for an abbey whose walls could only be a cage.
Carefully he closed the book. He could not read it. Not yet. That pain was real, and deep enough to make him gasp.
He turned. Sophia stood in the doorway, her face reflecting his own, white and shocked. For an instant she had seen in him the full count of his years.
“My lady,” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she said more sharply than she had meant. In a gentler voice she added, “Are you feeling well? You look ill.”
“I’m well.” He straightened, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and smiled as best he could.
“Corinna said you were in here at dawn.”
That was when Nikki liked to be taught and he to teach, while everyone else slept. It was their secret, theirs and Thea’s, for sometimes she came to sit with them, bringing them booty from the kitchen, most of which Nikki ate. Honey cakes this morning, and a bowl of raisins. “I’m well,” he repeated.
“But won’t you have any—” she began.
He was already gone, his book under his arm.
o0o
Alf woke to a timid shaking and a voice calling his name. Sophia’s maid bent over him, her hair down, a nightrobe clutched to her ample bosom. Her grief and fear, mingled with embarrassment, shocked him into full consciousness.
“Master,” she said, “Master, I’m sorry, but my lady wouldn’t let me send Diogenes.” She was very careful not to look at him save in quick glances. “It’s Master Bardas. He’s—”
Alf was up, pulling a tunic over his head, striding forward even before it was settled around him.
He heard Bardas’ coughing in the passage, stilled as he opened the door. “Damn it, woman!” Bardas said hoarsely. “You didn’t have to wake the whole household.”
Sophia moved aside as Alf came to the bed. By lamplight her face was death-white. But Bardas’ was grey, clay-colored, filmed with sweat. The hands that tried to thrust Alf away had no strength. “What did you get up for? You don’t sleep enough as it is.” His voice cracked into a cough; he groped for a cloth, snatched it from his wife’s hand.
As the spasm passed, Alf reached for the napkin. Bardas gripped it tightly, but the strong slender fingers pried it away and smoothed it. The stains upon it were scarlet.
Alf met Sophia’s eyes. They were brave and steady, but beneath lay terror. She had seen the death in her husband’s face.
Alf folded the cloth and laid it beside Bardas’ hand. “This isn’t the first time,” he said.
“It’s a touch of lung fever, that’s all. I’m getting better. No need to drag you out of your bed.”
Alf knelt by Bardas’ side. Fear was thick in the room, Katya’s, Sophia’s; and Bardas’, a deep well of it overlaid with anger. Dying, I know it, damn this body; dying, and what will they all do? War’s coming, Sophia’s as good as a man but who’ll believe it, little as she is, no bigger than a child. Sophia, the girls, poor half-made Nikephoros who was all the son I could manage; some bull of a Frank will trample them all and leave them for dead.
Alf examined him with the light sure touch which so comforted the people who came to Saint Basil’s. In spite of himself Bardas sighed under it. Pain stabbed his lungs; his eyes darkened as he fought back the spasm. But the hands were there, deft and gentle, and the face like a lamp in the gloom. There was nothing boyish in it, nothing even youthful.
No, it seemed to say to him without moving its lips. No one will harm you or yours. Nor will you die. Not yet. Sleep, my friend. Sleep deep.
Bardas fought to hold to the light. But he had no strength against that gentle, implacable will. His eyes closed; his breathing eased and deepened.
“He’ll sleep now,” Alf said, “and be better when he wakes.”
He straightened, drawing a long breath. His face was drawn, his eyes staring blindly into the dark. But the grey pallor had left Bardas’ skin; he slept easily, without that terrible rattling of breath which had frightened Sophia even before the coughing began.
Alf was turning away, wavering a little. She caught his cold hand, though once she had it she could think of nothing to say.
He swayed visibly. She pushed him into a chair and held him there while Katya ran to fetch wine. A sip or two seemed to strengthen him; his eyes lost their blind look, and a ghost of color tinged his cheeks.
Relief made Sophia’s voice sharp. “Don’t you go, too,” she snapped at him.
“I can’t,” he said faintly, or perhaps she imagined it. A moment later he spoke in a different, stronger voice. “Bardas is very ill. I won’t hide that from you. But if he rests and refrains from fretting, he can recover somewhat. Enough to see this war to its end.”
She had known it, but the blow brought her to her knees. Alf reached for her; she shook him off. If her knees had given way, her mind had not. “You’re not well yourself. Go to bed now and give me one less thing to worry about.”
“It was only a passing faintness.”
“Go to bed, I said!”
It was the same tone which she used with a recalcitrant child. She saw a spark of anger in his eyes—after all, she had sent for him and made use of him and thanked him not at all—and with it a glint that might have been amusement, but he obeyed her meekly enough.
He had left his wine almost untouched. She raised the cup, stared at it for a long moment, and drained it to the dregs.
But the strong vintage of Cos had no power tonight to dull her wits or to lull her body to sleep. After a wakeful while she left Bardas in Katya’s care and went where her feet led her.
o0o
The garden had succumbed to frost some time since; the waxing moon lent a cold beauty to its ruins. Sophia walked through the brittle grass among flower beds covered thickly with leaves until spring. Although the air was cold, the wine warmed her.
A flicker of light, a murmur of voices, drew her to the far corner. The moon glinted on Alf’s pale head as he sat cross-legged on the ground, a white dove nestling in his hands. Even as Sophia paused, shrinking back instinctively into the shadows, he said in a soft clear voice, “You know I can’t do that.”
The dove stirred, ruffling its feathers.
“I’ve tried,” he said. “I can’t. I do everything just as you’ve told me; and when the change begins, when nothing inside me is solid or stable, terror drives me back into myself.”
The white bird spread its wings. His hands were empty; a hound stood before him, glowing white as if its coat had trapped the moon. Its ears were the color of blood.
Something moved in Alf’s shadow. A small figure danced about the beast, and the beast leaped with it, licking its laughing face.
Alf’s grave expression softened. “Yes; that’s my favorite shape, too.” His hands gathered light, fingers flying; he wrapped Nikephoros in shimmering strands like jewels, or like chains.
Sophia sprang forward in fear, in consuming anger. She snatched up her son, hardly aware that the cords of light had thinned and fallen away, or that the witch-hound had fallen back, leaving her face to face with the creature she had begun to love as a kinsman.
“Sorcerer!” she hissed at him.
He flinched as if she had struck him, but said no word. He looked very young, and wounded to the heart.
He had ensnared them all and corrupted her son. Nikki struggled wildly in her arms, not knowing her at all, aware only that she had taken him away from his delight.
“You’re hurting him,” Alf said softly.
She tightened her grip. “Better I than you. How long have you had your spell on him? How long before you make him one of you?”
“Since we met,” he answered, “and never. No human can become what I am.”
Surely his candor was a trap. Nikki had quieted, chest heaving, each breath catching in a sob. She held him more lightly and turned him to face her. A sharp pain wrung from her a cry; he broke free.
His teeth had drawn blood. She pressed a corner of her shawl to the wound and stood still, watching without comprehension.
Alf had not drawn the child in or otherwise sealed his victory. Nikki clung to him with frantic strength; gently but firmly he pried the clutching hands away and set Nikki on his feet.
For a moment his hands rested on Nikki’s shoulders. They stiffened, then sagged. Nikki turned slowly, drew his mother’s arm down, kissed the place where he had bitten her. His face was wet with tears.
She kissed them away. His arms locked around her waist. But only for a moment. He stood back, head up, and turned his face from her to Alf and back again. His pleading was clear to read.
She hardened her heart. “Who is your master, witch-man? The Lord of Lies?”
“No,” he said, the flat word, no more.
“Why? Why did you turn out to be like this? We took you in. We trusted you. We loved you. Why didn’t you—oh God, why didn’t you keep me from seeing this?”
He touched her hand. She recoiled. But he pursued, rising, towering over her. His fingers closed about her wrist; he turned her arm, uncovering the wound. It had bled very little, but it ached fiercely.
He brushed her skin with a fingertip, rousing a deep shudder, yet the touch was warm. The pain ebbed away; the marks faded like smoke in the sun.
He let her go. She drew back step by step until she was well out of reach. “Why?” she cried to him.
“I wanted you to know from the first. You wouldn’t listen. The doctor knew in Chalcedon. You wouldn’t heed him. And I was weak enough to let you be. Tonight... Bardas is dying, Sophia. Within a year he will die, nor can any power of mine do more than slow his dying. And before he slept he wanted me to tend you as a grown son would when he should be gone. Could I let either of you depend upon a lie?”
Her voice caught in her throat. She forced it out. “Does—does he—”
“He knows.”
“But when—”
“Before I made him sleep. He said he always knew I wasn’t like anyone else. He didn’t want you to know. You are a jewel among women, he said, but after all you are a woman.”
“But he didn’t say any of that!”
“He thought it.”
There was a silence. Sophia gathered her scattered wits into what order she might. Alf stood unmoving. The moon had caught his eyes and struck fire in them.
She rubbed her arm where the pain had been, slowly, eyes fixed upon him. “What would happen,” she asked in a steady voice, “if I called a priest?”
“He would be extremely annoyed to be roused so late.”
She strangled laughter that was half hysteria. “And for nothing, too. I can’t hate you, Alfred. I may be endangering everyone who’s dear to me, but I simply can’t.”
“I’ll go away,” he said. “I should have done it at the first.”
Sophia wanted to hit him. She seized his hand instead, too quickly for either of them to shrink away, and held it fast. “Don’t be ridiculous. You have a place here. There’s no point in running away from it.”
“I’m corrupting your children.”
“You’re keeping my husband alive.”
He bowed his head. His face was in shadow, the lids lowered over the strangeness of his eyes. He was a legend, a tale of wonder and of terror. Yet she realized that she felt no fear of him at all. His hand was warm in hers, made of flesh like her own; she had seen him ill and she had seen him well, healing where men had destroyed.
“No,” he said, “don’t judge me now. It’s only the wine and your anxiety for Bardas, and guilt that you spoke to me as you did, though you had the right.”
“I had no right!” she countered sharply. “I forgot everything I’d ever seen of you. I spoke to wound you who’d already worn yourself to a rag for Bardas and for me; and I thought things of you that no man would ever forgive. And you never moved to defend yourself. Whatever you are, Alfred of Saint Ruan’s, you’re far closer to Heaven than to Hell.”
“You’ve seen what I can do.”
“Would you harm me or any of us?”
“No.” He answered at once, without doubt, though the rest was soft, almost hesitant. “I couldn’t. It would hurt me too much.”
She embraced him tightly. “You’re safe now,” she said. “No more fears and no more secrets. There’s only one thing.”
He tensed.
Sophia drew his head down, the better to see his face. “Do you always know what everyone’s thinking?”
His eyes widened in dismay and in understanding. “Oh, no! Only when there’s need, or when the other wishes it; or when there’s no help for it.”
She let him go, oddly comforted. “Of course,” she said. “There would be laws and courtesies. And you are a philosopher?”
“Of sorts.”
“You’re not as young as you look, are you?”
“No,” he answered, “I am not.”
“Sometimes it shows.” She touched him again, a brief caress. “Thank you, Alfred.”
“For what?”
“For everything. Even For telling me. I still trust you with my children.”
He bowed low, unable for once to speak.