Chapter 17

Pikeford Abbey

Northern Lincolnshire

S he had played dead. Or nearly so.

Fira had not thought she could put on the face of someone she was not, but she proved adept and stronger than believed. Might an overdose of desperation and a streak of stubborn be all that was needed to expose a person’s true depths?

Regardless, for her lack of response following the return of her breath and senses, what was to commence last eve had not.

Her slack body had been roped against the base of a tree, and after Drumfiddle had to assist with building a warming fire, he tried to rouse her. With each failure, the novice became more anxious, though only once did he voice fear the means of silencing her had done irreparable damage. For that, he was dealt a backhand, and again the friar questioned aloud whether he was worthy of joining the Free Spirits .

Head hanging, the young man had apologized and turned away. What Drumfiddle did not see was the dark expression of one becoming disillusioned, which Fira hoped to turn to her advantage.

Though she thirsted and hungered, shivered and ached, and was horribly aware of the washcloth’s failure to prevent her garments from being stained, she had remained unmoving. Only when she heard the snores of those warmed by blankets and the fire had she raised her head.

For many tearful hours, she struggled to unbind herself, but the friar's knots held. Thus, with little falsity about her sluggishness, at dawn she was rolled into the blanket and stowed beneath the bench again—with one difference. Braving more rebuke, the novice had pressed for her to be gagged rather than risk strangling her unto death as could have happened last eve.

The thick cloth thrust between her teeth and tied at the back of her neck was uncomfortable, and more so as saliva wet it, but when other travelers were met on the road, that and the kick of a heel quieted her as effectively as collapsing her throat.

Blessedly, she slept through much of the discomfort, sharply awakened once by bile rising from a barren stomach, next cramps, then a greater need for the cloths in the purse taken from her the same as her spectacles.

When later they paused to relieve themselves, as her moist gag was being replaced with another, she had told Drumfiddle she needed the cloths to prevent staining her gown further.

Unlike the novice whose cheeks flamed, he had not appeared discomfited. Circling her with the crucifix thumping his belly, he told he saw no evidence of staining, and if she spoke true, the irritation would also trouble the evil one.

Fira had longed to name him a fool for not considering her gown’s color hid that evidence, but hopeful of better treatment and a slackening of the watch over her, she had not. However, not only was she kept close on a leash but excluded from satisfying thirst and hunger ahead of resuming the journey.

Though greater her suffering league after league of bumping, rocking, and lurching, she indulged in tears only when her chest strained to the point of pain, and as quietly as possible lest she was heard and the false man of God took advantage of that weakness rather than further delay her purging.

For how violently she startled several times, she knew she slept, but she would not have believed how much if not for what was revealed this last time she was set on her feet and uncovered. No sunlight pained her eyes as she sought to keep her legs under her and subdue humiliation over her fouled clothing. Light was present by way of torches positioned far left and right on a wall three times her height—and in need of repair. Night had returned.

“Fear not, Lady,” the novice said very near.

Fira looked across her shoulder at the blur of him. She had assumed it was Drumfiddle who loosed her, but that one stood on the opposite side of the cart conversing with two who wore monks’ robes. Though they spoke too low to be understood, the friar boasted an air of self-importance as his audience nodded and glanced her way.

“Salvation here,” Edgar said and gave a nod of assurance that might be as much to convince him as her. “The demoniac of you shall be purged by the truest men of faith so you may return whole to your family as testament to those God favors.”

When he tugged the gag down, and the words she spoke were breath and bits of gravel, his brow furrowed. “What say you, Lady?”

She swallowed against a parched throat. “If Free Spirits are the truest men of faith, this friar is an imposter,” she said low, “ and you jeopardize your salvation by abducting a godly woman.”

Wariness flashed in his eyes, but then he raised his voice and said, “So speaks a Daughter of Eve, the dearest of Satan’s pupils.”

“What does she put in your ear, Edgar?” Drumfiddle called.

“She seeks to seduce me with threats.”

Fira wanted to slap him, to scream and?—

“I am pleased you are not easily fooled,” said the friar whose face bore her scratches. “Mayhap you do have enough good clay to be shaped into one of us.”

Fira swung around and glared at him and the monks. “I demand you return me to Boston. Do you not, Wulfrith wrath will be dealt ahead of King Edward’s.”

“She is a Wulfrith?” exclaimed the monk to the right, an elderly man as told by torchlight flitting in and out of the sagging and grooved flesh of his lower face.

The friar grunted. “So the deceiver claims, but if true, a good service we do that family by ensuring she does not infect them, and much gratitude will be due us.”

“Should they lend us their support, it could end our persecution,” said the other monk.

“If you think my family would champion heretics who abducted me from a hospital and did me harm, your mind is as cracked as your faith!” Fira put all her voice into the words.

“Gag her and get her in the abbey!” Drumfiddle commanded Edgar.

As Fira’s upper arms were gripped, she sprang to the side and slipped free, but her feet became entangled in the blanket and dropped her.

When once more the friar caught her up and moved her toward a place she did not wish to go, she slapped and clawed, but then his arm around her shoulders rolled her tight against his chest and he reached for her neck.

“Nay!” She pressed her chin to her collarbone, sank her teeth into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, and tasted blood.

With a yell, he tore his hand free, and crushing her chest against his, stumbled toward the crumbling edifice that could no longer be a holy place.

Barely able to breathe and fearing lost consciousness again, Fira let the fight go out of her. With her face pressed to a chest that stank, she heard the friar tell those following him into the abbey that this was further proof she harbored a demon.

Though the murmur of agreement tempted her to struggle again, she yielded to reason. Even were she not weakened by thirst, hunger, and fatigue, there was no opportunity to escape under these circumstances. But later, if God refused to take pity on her, she would make one.

Two northern abbeys eliminated. The first poorly constructed of timber and left to the elements, all that remained was a mess of collapsed posts. The second whose stone walls were crumbling and thatch roof long gone was little more than picked-clean bones. Unfortunately, the next abandoned abbey must wait since night descended and the horses were exhausted for being pushed hard to overtake their prey.

Which we would have done if the friar and novice took the main road north and had not gone to ground for fear of pursuit, Amaury silently added as he leaned against a tree to consider the moonlit sky visible between budding branches. Regardless, there were many more houses of God where Fira might be taken and most were distant from the main road that may not have existed three hundred years ago. Frustratingly, the lady could have been transported opposite where Amaury needed to go to be at the helm of the plan to end Gert’s piracy.

And avenge my son and me, he acknowledged what most moved him, then looked to his men and the boy sleeping near the fire during his watch. Returning his regard to the heavens and feeling the dark inside press against his ribs, he muttered, “I weary of talking to You who listens at best. If I err, speak louder or…shove rather than nudge.” He drew breath. “Give aid in restoring the lady to her family, else free me of what remains of my faith.”

Abruptly, he straightened from the tree to walk the perimeter, but went still when the voice within—or was it without?—reminded his greatest prayers during captivity had been for his son and niece. Once he learned both had survived the fall of Calais, The Pestilence, and other misfortune, and that they thrived with the Wulfriths, he had thanked the Lord abundantly.

And yet, for prayers not answered exactly as you wish, like a child pouting over being denied a wondrous gift as you clasp the most wondrous of all, increasingly you attribute those blessings to good fortune rather than divine intervention , that voice rebuked.

Amaury groaned. “Forgive my unbelief, Lord. Strengthen the lady’s faith by adding my prayers to hers. Help us find good in what comes.”

It was more circumspect than heartfelt, giving the Lord His due lest He waver over interceding, but better that than giving Him an ultimatum while ignoring the gift of Mace and Séverine. Simply, Amaury had suffered too much loss—his wife, freedom, fatherhood, home and, for a time, facility with speech and productive thought. Then there were the stolen years that should have numbered among his best.

Heat rising in his chest, he fought down anger that made him long to wreak vengeance on Gert and Hugh beyond gaining justice for wrongs done him.

The dark in me, he acknowledged, though the priest in whom he confided when he sought his aid to secure an audience with Lady Eugénie D’Argent had named that dark something Amaury could not. In parting, the man who arranged the meeting that further advanced the search for Mace and Séverine had said, “My son, do you not cast out those demons, they will drag you and others near and dear to their raging depths.”

Innocents like Fira, Amaury acknowledged and groaned low.

Water and bread, the first tasting of dust and mold, the second so dry it seemed all crust. Still, Fira drank and ate and asked for more.

That made Drumfiddle smile until Edgar told he would go for both. Harsh words halted him before the cell door in which a grate was set to allow one without to intrude on the privacy of the one within.

“What you shall do is empty her waste,” said the friar and, at the young man’s hesitation, snapped, “Be quick, then verify the necessities have been prepared.”

Necessities? Fira questioned as Edgar departed with the pail. Shuddering, she shifted on the thin pallet to which she was delivered last eve that might yet be this eve. Drawing her knees up beneath her fouled gown, she settled her back against the wall of one of the cells that had been places of rest for men devoted to austere lives, the door grate a means of ensuring they remained committed to God and their cloistered community.

Now the friar whose scored cheek attested to how little harm she did him compared to what he did her, ran his gaze from her tangled hair to the toes of her boots. “As your thirst and hunger are satisfied?—”

“They are not!” She kept her eyes fixed on him where he hunkered by the pallet. “Nor has my need for cloths been met. As I am a lady, not an animal, I demand civility and respect.”

“When the demoniac of you is slain, and you show appreciation for our good work, that you shall be afforded.” He reached behind, and only when he brought forth a bag did she notice its wide strap crossed his chest above the thing that pretended it was a crucifix.

Settling it on his thighs, he smiled and said, “In here a clean garment, albeit no gown, for we are only men in this holy place. ’Twill be more comfortable than what you, Daughter of Eve, have fouled.”

“For your abduction and refusal to provide cloths!”

“Also a mantle, hose, your purse, spectacles, and cloths. If you refuse your demon’s counsel and do not resist the purging, these shall be yours and soon you will be in the arms of your grateful family.”

Though she commanded herself to silence, her tongue rebelled. “As already told, ’tis not evil in me?—”

He leaned forward so suddenly, she jerked back, nearly striking her head on the wall. “You have but to trust that we who have ascended higher than all others know what is needed to extricate your soul from what seeks to tear it from you. As what we must undertake will cause suffering, hold to the word I give that we shall do all in our power to make you whole again in the sight of God.” He raised his eyebrows. “Will you let me bring you into the light?”

Had she ever done a harder thing than seal closed a mouth stuffed with invectives? She did not think so. But then, ever her family was at her side .

And oft I resented it, she admitted, then said, “Since I am afflicted with The Falling Sickness as the woman at market verified?—”

“That is just another name for what is in you ready to spring upon those who are as innocent as once you were.”

“Not so!”

He set his face nearer. “You know why it is called that?”

“Because that is what it is—and all it is.”

“Nay, it describes what happens when the soul of the possessed protests being consumed. The demon causes its host to fall to the ground between heaven and hell, allowing Satan’s creatures below to seize hold of one whose convulsions are the soul’s struggle to free itself.”

Fira knew much of what was said of her affliction, but having never heard this, it took some moments to respond. When she did, it was with scorn. “Since what burdens me differs from a winter ague only in its severity, you speak superstitious drivel!”

His jaw shifted. “As a master Free Spirit, I know the demon unfurls your tongue. For that I show grace.”

“Drivel!” she repeated.

He gripped her knee hard. “Cling to the word of one?—”

“One who views an ailment as proof the afflicted is a demoniac?” She knocked his hand aside. “Of detriment should the Lord turn His face from me for heeding a heretic’s words.”

His mouth turned down, and she thought it mockery, but moisture rushed his eyes. “I try to ensure what must be done is completed as quickly as possible since the greater the effort to purge you, the less likely you will survive your tormentor.”

“You are my tormentor! You and others who play God though formed of the same soil as I.”

He stared at her like a dog kicked out of her path. Then he sighed and set the bag at the foot of her pallet. “As your will is too weak to keep the demon from speaking, we must strengthen it.”

She almost wished malice behind his words for it fitting one intent on harm. Instead, he sounded disappointed as occasionally her brothers were with the future keeper of The Book of Wulfrith.

When he dropped onto his knees near her drawn-in feet, she could only ward him off with a flung up hand.

His mouth curved sorrowfully. “God willing, and with the aid of those made one with Him, you will arise purified.” He lifted the crucifix and touched his lips to the bars’ intersection, then held it out to her. “Do as I did, defying the one who would have you love and embrace him.”

Before Fira could turn her head aside, he thrust the thing near her nose. “I have no demon in me!” she declared and pushed aside his misshapen crucifix. “’Tis you, a heretic, who—” The rest was mouthed for once more being rendered incapable of breath.

As she struggled to free herself from the hand pinning her head to the wall, Drumfiddle’s blurred face became shadow. Then the greys of it darkened and went black.