Chapter 15

MARCH 19TH

"L ook, you have family rites for the equinox. You should go home for them." Griffin was on the sofa in the sitting room, settling in to be persuasive.

Charlus looked exceptionally dubious. "I don't need to. Sir." That last was pointed. "I'm needed here."

"For the moment, what I'm doing is research and getting things into my head. And yes, it's a help for you to make sure there's food, and move stacks of books from one location to another, but it's not actually essential." Griffin was, in fact, curious whether Charlus would catch on to the other reasons on his own.

Charlus dropped into the chair. "You have a plan in mind."

"Several plans. And also, several that are on hold for various reasons," Griffin agreed. "Care to name them?"

"On hold, whatever happens with Annice Matthewman. No note today, probably not tomorrow, it being Sunday, and who knows about when." Charlus ticked it off on his finger. "And possibly some progress with one of the others, but that's slow."

"Just so. What else?" Griffin shifted slightly, to take the strain off his hip.

There was silence for a good twenty seconds. "The Courts. People in the courts, specifically." Griffin beamed and gestured with one hand for Charlus to continue. "Politics." Charlus said the word with some distaste.

"And you being at the equinox rites with your family might turn up some interesting information, don't you think?" Griffin flicked his fingers. "You know they gossip. Well, most people gossip. It's just a question of who they gossip with and to and about."

"The factions, you mean. If anyone is being pointed about your absence, your success or failure. But if I'm there, won't they shut up?" Charlus asked.

"To your face, yes. To one of your relatives? Maybe not. Not everyone actually keeps track of the familial relationships as much as they ought. Anyway. You might hear something. If you don't, you don't, you should still get a few days with your family." There were other people, former apprentices, where Griffin would not have pushed that, because he'd known things with their family were touchy. That wasn't the case with Charlus, who cheerfully chattered about seeing cousins or aunts or uncles when he got a chance, as well as his parents.

Charlus nodded. "All right." He let out a long sigh. "I feel like I'm letting you down."

"I'm telling you to go. Look, you can go round and collect groceries for me. I'm perfectly competent to make a sandwich or heat some soup. You can come check on me - say Tuesday or Wednesday." Equinox was the Monday. "And I can make it down to the White Horse & Griffin on the crutches just fine, and I will, so long as it's not actually pelting with rain."

That got him a little snort. "And the rest of the work?"

"You don't like the idea of politics, do you?" Griffin said, pressing on that point.

Charlus shook his head. "It's na?ve of me, I know, sir, but I'd rather hoped the Courts were above that. The pursuit of truth and justice."

"Ah, but truth often has a certain aspect of perspective. Certainly, there are a variety of approaches. I don't care for some of the people who don't care for me, but I do, on the whole, think they're competent at what they're doing." Griffin left it there to see what Charlus would do with that.

"But not perhaps - may I speak freely, sir?" Charlus looked up, a little wary now.

"Please. I would like you to." That was promising, and this was one thing people had to come to in their own way and their own time. It was part of apprenticing, but it wasn't one that could be listed out as something to be mastered, not without changing how people learned.

"You might not want that the others should, for example, be named Heir. Should rise to a different position. At least as things are." Charlus took a deep breath. "Nestor Aplin, for one. And, um. Ulrich Moore, or Neave Williams. And I wouldn't trust Tess Manfred as a clerk, exactly."

That last one was an interesting piece of information. That was new to Griffin. Though generally he preferred Lucy or one of the other clerks he knew well, and Tess was still relatively junior. "Nestor, indeed. He has not been subtle about it to me, though I haven't heard anything new in a while. And I was aware of Moore and Williams, but not Manfred."

"I heard her gossiping a couple of weeks ago. With someone outside the Courts - she was a table or two over at supper." Charlus considered. "It wasn't anything against the confidentiality oaths, not about specific cases. I didn't report it, but it got closer to that line than I would have thought judicious."

"Did she know you were there?" Griffin asked.

"Yes, she'd nodded at me when they were seated." Charlus bit his lip. "Is there a way to mention it informally?"

"There is. You could have a word with Mistress Henning or Master Willis or Master Osgood." He oversaw the clerks. "They can keep an eye out, and if there are other reports, they can act on the aggregate, even if no single incident quite steps over the line."

"I'll do that, then. When I get back to Trellech. You're sure you'll be fine here? There isn't anything besides the groceries I can set up while I'm gone?"

"Me, my books, and some tea." Griffin grinned. "You'd be bored, anyway. If you feel you need to keep busy, you know what to be studying."

"Would it help if I went round the Courts, besides that report? There won't be anyone there, of course, bar a handful of people." Charlus offered it a little tentatively. "Um. Harriet Wilson?" He made it a query, not just about her likely presence over the recess, but also the politics.

"Harriet's a cypher, honestly, in several ways. I work well with her, we both think we'd do an excellent job as Heir. We're both likely right, but the Court would do different things with her. I don't worry about politics from her end near as much, because…" Griffin hesitated, trying to figure out how to put it.

"It has seemed to me, sir, that she wants to prove what she can do. Not prove what you can't." Charlus was a little cautious, but he said it, and Griffin was tremendously proud of the trust and also the analytical sense it showed.

"That's an excellent description, thank you. She's likely to be around a bit. Feel free to offer your help if she has anything you can lend a hand with. I'm curious what that might shake loose."

"Sir." Charlus looked pleased to have a little more context. "And the rest of it?"

"Let me think about it, and I'll journal with what to look for. Tonight or tomorrow." Griffin shrugged. "And I thought I might arrange a carter to take me up to the Abbey ruins on the equinox before you fuss about my being inside the whole time."

"Sir." Again it was amused. Then Charlus seemed to think of something else. "You also think it's likely people might talk to you differently if I'm not here. Is that part of it?"

"It is." Griffin beamed. "Well spotted. You have been exceedingly helpful, but I want to see if anything happens if people see me on my own. Sometimes it does. People make assumptions about the chair, what it means. Like I said before, most of them are wrong, but it's hard to argue with an assumption, or something stuck in someone's head."

"You said people treated you like you were dim. I can't imagine that lasting much beyond someone actually talking to you." Charlus nodded. "All right. Let me put together a list of what to make sure you've got for food and that the laundry's put out, and all that."

After all that, Charlus left via the portal on Sunday, leaving Griffin in anticipated peace for a couple of days. Annice did not send a note or anything of the kind, but Griffin honestly hadn't expected that. On the Monday, their landlady had made arrangements for a carter to pick Griffin up. The cart had been decidedly rustic and bumpy, and the carter had eyed the crutches with distaste. Griffin had spent the ride on a bench in the back, along with several bags of grain and some smaller crates, looking out at the scenery.

Getting to the Abbey was an interesting geometric problem, actually. They were staying down near the harbour, on the east bank of the Esk. The abbey overlooked the harbour, nominally right above them, up the famous hundred ninety-nine steps. To get to the top of the cliff involved the carter going well north before turning east and up a long sloping hill. It wasn't terribly far, in absolute terms - Griffin thought it maybe a mile and a half, maybe two - but it took the better part of an hour. The man let him out with a grunt. "Have deliveries. Back in an hour, m'be two."

"Fairly sure I can occupy myself for two." He had a guidebook, and besides, what he was actually interested in was time in the space. "Back out here, then?" He dug out coins with a bit extra, dropping them into the man's hand. The carter nodded, then wheeled horse and cart around in a big circle, and disappeared back out to the road.

Griffin turned his attention to the abbey. There were legends about the place, and that was some of why he'd wanted to come up, seeing as how he was in Whitby with some free time. But it wasn't just the current ruins that interested him. First, there was the way Saint Hild had administered her abbey. And second, there was the whole question of an abbey not just as a religious structure, but as one which shaped boundaries and the law and the way the laws worked for the people.

He slowly made his way along the dirt path, taking his time. He didn't want the crutches to catch on something uneven in the ground, a dip, hollow, or stone. He had no need to rush, anyway. There were a number of papers in more recent centuries, since the Pact, about whether Saint Hild had had magic of her own. She was certainly an aristocrat, raised in the court of Northumbria after her father's murder. One tale came from her infancy, about her mother dreaming about a necklace of such light that it filled - so the Venerable Bede had said - all Britain with the glory of its brilliance.

She'd come to being a nun later, not until she was thirty-three. Griffin always rather liked the stories of people who changed courses in the middle of their life, they were often far more interesting. She'd become a nun, then abbess elsewhere, before founding a double monastery at Whitby around 657. It had been home to both men and women, though living separately. It had even hosted the synod where the dates of Easter were established. Griffin found a grounding and peace in the religion, but he absolutely appreciated the effort it took to sort out that kind of system when there were many different adherents and preferences.

On one hand, the calculations weren't terribly complex, as chronological magics went: the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. The problem came when people were using different definitions for every part of that phrase - when Sunday began, how the lunar months fell, and even the date of the equinox. At one point, it meant that the Northumbrian court celebrated Easter on different dates, depending on if they were aligned with the king or the queen, with all the complexities of fasting and feasting that meant. Saint Hild had argued for the more Celtic calculation, using tables that ran for eighty-four years before repeating, but the Roman method had won out. As a legalistic argument, Griffin appreciated the points in favour of the Roman dating system, but it had been a bitter argument, and it had lessened Saint Hild's influence.

Though it had not shaken her place in legend. There were tales about the area being beset by snakes. One version of the story had it that she had gone to God in prayer, and with several suggestions. That part always made Griffin laugh, because it was sensible. She'd suggested that the snakes lose their heads, so they could not bite. When that did not stop the distressing wriggling coils of snakes all over the ground, she suggested they be turned to stone. The stones - now people knew they were ammonite fossils - were abundant in the cliffs around Whitby. Griffin had seen plenty polished up in the shops.

The abbey, though, had been a triumph. Hild had run the entire place, with a number of the monks becoming bishops, and one coming to be a poet. The first poet whose name was known, in fact, Caedmon. Griffin had learned of the surviving verse, though in translation, and bits of it had rolled around in his head ever since. This was not the abbey that Hild had known, nor Caedmon had known, but it evoked the verse brilliantly. "Hail now the holder of the Heavens' realm, that architect's might, his mind many ways, Lord forever and father of glory, Ultimate crafter of all wonders." That was the face of the divine that Griffin had always found most intriguing, ever since he'd first heard of it.

Making his way into the ruined abbey, that image was made material. Hild's abbey had been destroyed by raids from the Danish. Not long after the Conquest, though, there had been a Benedictine monastery established, then built out into the Romanesque style, then in the Gothic. Alas, it had fallen into ruin with Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. There were soaring arches, though the vault itself was long gone, and there'd been further damage from German bombardment from the water during the War.

What Griffin had wanted most, though, was the feel of the place. And that was where a bit of quiet - a mist had come up, chill enough he had the place entirely to himself - did wonders. He could feel the structure of it, the way the architecture was its own magic. The place had been infused with intention and determination and lines of magic that lingered still, even though it had been centuries since it had been used for its intended purpose. He made his way along, walking slowly, step by step, leaning on the crutches. Now and then he'd pull his arm out of one, to press his palm to the stone, and feel what the place was telling him.

It wasn't like the Courts, not exactly. But they had something of the same lineage, making a place for a particular purpose, and reaching toward something better than mere utility or necessity or individual benefit. And like so many ancient buildings, there had been repairs - work done on the West transept, the part that had been hit worst in 1914 - to mend and stabilise it. That was from the guidebook, of course. Griffin knew someone had called it a waste of money, but the place was beautiful, and it was a landmark for ships on the ocean besides.

He'd kept an eye on the time, coming out far enough to see if the carter had come back periodically. At an hour, no. At ninety minutes, no. At two hours, his legs were giving out, and he came out to sit on a bit of wall. Time passed until it had been three and a quarter hours. Griffin could feel his hunger - not a risk, not yet, but balance in all things had to be his watchword now about his body.

He gave it another half hour and then had to concede that the carter wasn't coming. If he wanted to get back somewhere with warmth and food, well, he'd have to do it himself. There wasn't anyone around to ask. He had his journal, but he wasn't sure if Charlus would see it promptly, given the day, and the same with anyone else he could reasonably ask in Trellech. The Guards he knew would either be busy or off-duty with their own celebrations. His parents would be at his sister's.

Griffin was at the top of the steps. Going downhill was easier than going up. There were probably places he could sit along the way. And he might well find more people on the steps. He thought the railing ran along a line of houses. Slowly, carefully, he began picking his way down, counting the steps because that way, he could measure his progress.

He'd only got to seventy-seven when he had to give up and sit.