Emperor of Thorns

‘Sunday’s for praying.’ This from Alfred, the peacemaker in the potato field.

‘And studies,’ said Arthur, a tall and serious boy of around my age.

It turned out Sunday held time for studies additional to those the monks arranged for us. First though, I sat through lessons on lettering, instruction on the lives of saints, and a session of choir practice – I croaked like a crow. An elderly monk arrived for the day’s last lesson, hunched around a black cane, eyes bright but pale beneath the grey fringe of his hair. He had a sour look to him but the boys seemed to like him.

‘Ah. New boy. What’s your name, young man?’ He spoke quick and high with just a creak of age.

‘Jorg,’ I said.

‘Jorg, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sir.’

‘I’m Brother Winter. No sir about it. And I’m here to teach theology.’ He paused and frowned. ‘Jorg, eh?’

‘Yes, Brother.’

‘I never did hear of a St Jorg. Now ain’t that a curious thing? St Alfred, St Orscar, St David, St Arthur, St Winter … ain’t you got a saint’s day, boy?’

‘My mother had it that St George’s day would serve. Jorg being a flavour of George.’

‘The Brettan saint?’ He made to spit and caught himself. ‘He fell out of heaven when the sea swallowed those lands.’

Brother Winter let my name and its ill omens lie after that and taught us theology as promised. He proved entertaining and praised my quick wits, so we parted friends.

In the two hours between vespers and compline we ran free of prayers and lessons. The slightest hint had Orscar begging to show me the monastery – grounds and buildings all. He raced me around as fast as the evening dark allowed, eager to please, as if I were his big brother and my approval weighed more than all the gold in chapel. We crept up the woodpile by the old almonry where peasants came for alms in hard years, and from our vantage spied on Ajah’s soldiers who barracked there when not on duty.

‘The abbot says we don’t need soldiers everywhere.’ Orscar clambered back down, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘But David says he heard St Goodwin’s – down by Farfield – was raided six months back and burned flat. He heard it from novice Jonas at the smithy.’

‘If a raid comes, don’t trust in soldiers,’ I told him. ‘Run for the river and follow it upstream. Don’t stop for anything.’

I slipped away from Orscar in the dark and made my way to the road, where the monastery lane joined the wider way. Even ditching the boy with a turn of speed in the shadows felt like a betrayal. He’d started to dote on me like Maical with that idiot grin of his following Gemt. Like Justice used to pace after William and me, hour after hour, just happy to be pack with us, overjoyed if we petted him, ecstatic if Will wrapped him in his little arms and buried his face in that fur. The hound would stand there as if he were tolerating the hug, as if it wasn’t what he’d followed us half a day for, but his tail couldn’t lie.

Elban stood waiting a little way down the road, a ghost in the moonlight. ‘What’s the word, Jorth?’

They’d sent Elban because he didn’t look like trouble, but I’d back him against two of Ajah’s troopers any day. Well, not in a fair fight, but you don’t see many of those.

‘The word is precious little gold and more guardsmen than Brother Burlow is going to want to take on, well armed, with strong points to defend. The place is built to hold.’

‘They ain’t gonna like that news, Jorth.’ ‘Newth’ he said, struggling on the ‘s’. He sounded worried, though he scowled to hide it.

‘Tell Burlow you’re just the messenger,’ I suggested. ‘And keep out of Rike’s reach.’

‘Ain’t you coming with me then?’ Elban frowned. His tongue slid across the pale flesh of his gums.

‘There’s a piece or two worth stealing. If I can swipe them, I’ll come running. Otherwise I’ll join you here tomorrow, same time, and we’ll all go.’

I left him muttering ‘they won’t like it, they won’t like it’.

I’d counted twelve guards, none of them much younger than Elban, and the crucifix the abbot wore to vespers on its own was worth the effort to take them down. In truth, despite the cruel lessons taught me by my own father and by the thorns, I had found the whisper of a different way in the fields and halls and sanctums of St Sebastian, and whilst I listened with a sceptical ear, still I wanted to hear that whisper a little longer.

My father taught me not to love or to compromise, the thorns taught me that even family bonds are fatal weaknesses, a man must walk alone, bide his time and strike when the strength is in his hands. Sometimes, though, it seemed all that bound me to those lessons were the scars they had left on me.

As I trudged back I reasoned that what I wanted from the road, from my road-brothers, wasn’t gold and the slaughter of monks. I had come from wealth – I knew how the innocent died. What I sought was the power that lies in hands untied by social strings, not restrained by moral code, chivalric charter, the rules of war. I wanted to earn the edge that the Nuban showed in my father’s dungeons, to be forged in battle. And I would find those things in the hard times. I would steer my brothers into the crucible where the Hundred wet their swords, and see what would unfold.

I told myself all that, but unsaid, beneath those words, I knew that perhaps I just wanted a door back to gentler days when my mother had loved me. I was after all a child of ten, weak, stupid, and unformed. I had been taught the right lessons but all teachers know a pupil will backslide if hard lessons are not reinforced by repetition.

The scent of white musk reached me, reached into wherever it is the dreamer stands to watch their nightmare unfold. She stood with me, unseen and untouchable, but close, almost skin to skin as I pulled these old memories through her. And I knew she felt the threat, counted its approach in heartbeats, whilst knowing neither its nature nor the direction of its attack.

I had returned to find the monastery guards setting torches in iron brackets before the chapterhouse. More monks than I had suspected to be housed at St Sebastian’s were already gathered in the shadows by the wall. Evidently not all showed up for meals.

‘Where’d you go?’ Orscar rushed me from the dark. If I’d had a knife he’d have got himself stuck on it.

‘The bishop’s coming!’ His news proved too important to wait on my answer.

‘What bishop? Where?’ It didn’t seem a very likely story.

‘Bishop Murillo! His servant just arrived ahead of the procession to warn us. He’s on the north road. We’ll see their lights coming up over Jedmire Hill soon enough.’ Orscar kept hopping from one foot to the other, as if he needed to piss. Probably did.

‘Brother Miles said the Vatican sent the Pope’s own carriage to collect him.’ Arthur stood behind us now. ‘Murillo’s on his way to Roma.’

‘They’ll make him a cardinal! For sure!’ Orscar sounded far more excited about church politics than any eight-year-old should be.

‘Where are all the others?’ I asked. Apart from Orscar and Arthur none of the orphans had come for the show.

Orscar blinked. ‘They must’ve seen him before. He ministers at St Chelle. He’s visited before. Brother Winter said so.’