“It is a craft not without its uses when men take to the sword, Brother . . . What name do they call you by?”
“Gwalchmai.”
Gwalchmai, the Hawk of May; it was a piteously ill-fitting name, for he was built more like a partridge than a hawk.
He hitched up the lantern and began to swing it. “It’s comic really, isn’t it? My Lord Artos, they have made the guest place ready for you — but they will have told you that.”
“They told me. But I had liefer sleep with my men in the orchard. God’s night to you, Brother Gwalchmai.” And we went our separate ways, I to see for myself how Gault and the other three were doing, and he, swinging his lantern in blurred gouts of light before him, on across the garth to the place where the novices slept.
Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept a good sleep under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal’s flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound’s flank.
Next morning “the bloom began to wear off the bilberries,” as they say; and it was Brother Lucian the Infirmarer, in all innocence of heart, who first showed me that it was so. I had been down to the low pastures to look at the monastery’s horses — particularly those who were part broken ready for the autumn markets. There were four or five of them big-boned enough to be of some use to us, which might serve to fill up our losses; and I was considering in my mind the price to offer for them. I might be able to get the price out of Guidarius — after all, we were fighting his battles — or failing that, there was something in the war kist, for a few of us had lands of our own; we had sold off the poorer yearlings from the breeding runs, and the Saxon weapons and goldsmiths’ work that we took from time to time fetched a good price. It mostly went on horses, but not when I could get them in any other way, for I had always to keep something in reserve against the days when gold might be the only way there was.
My mind was so full of horses that I all but walked through the old man, who had turned aside very kindly on seeing me, to tell me that I need have no fear for the wounded, for they would be well cared for, after we were gone.
I stared at him, scarcely understanding, for the moment, what he meant. “I am very sure of it; but, Brother Lucian, we are not yet saddling up.”
“Na na,” he said, smiling. “The day is yet very young.”
“The day on which we ride out from here has not yet dawned, Brother Lucian,” I said bluntly, and saw the startled look in his milky old eyes.
“But surely — surely, my Lord Artos, you will wish to be away back to Lindum now that the work of your swords in this part of the Fens is done?”
They were not trying to drive us out, I realized that; it was simply that it had never occurred to these fools in their enclosed world that men and horses who have been at hard stress for many days together must be rested when the chance offers. “My men need full three days’ rest, and so do my horses; today and tomorrow and the day after, we remain within your gates; and on the day after that, we ride for Lindum.”
“But — but —” He began to bleat like an elderly she-goat.
“But what, Brother Lucian?”
“The stores — the grain — always there is shortage in the springtime. We had our own poor folk to feed, these past few days —”
“But no longer,” I said; for the country folk had for the most part scattered back to their own lives, with their dogs and their cattle, their ducks and their pigs, now that the danger was passed over.
“They ate while they were here,” he rallied and pointed out, reasonably enough. I could see the thoughts scurrying among mouths and grain baskets inside his head. “There are close on four hundred of you, with the grooms and drivers; even should you eat sparingly as we do ourselves, which — forgive me, my Lord Artos — is not to be expected of fighting men — even should you eat as sparingly as we do ourselves, you will swallow up more than a month’s supplies, and your horses will graze bare the pasture that was for ours and our milch cows.”
I broke in on him. “Brother Lucian, will you go now to the Abbot and ask him to receive me.”
“The Holy Father is at prayer.”
“I can wait while the prayer is done, but no longer. Go now and tell him that the Count of Britain would speak with him.”
The Abbot received me within an hour, seated in his cross-legged chair in the hall where last night our wounds had been dressed, the more senior of the Brothers ranged about him. His head might have been that of a king on a golden coin. He rose to greet me, courteously enough, and then seated himself again, his blue-veined hands on the carved arms of the great chair. “Brother Lucian brings me word that you wish to speak with me.”
“Yes,” I said. “It seems that all is not clear between us as to when I and my Companions leave this place.”
He bent his head. “So Brother Lucian tells me.”
“And so that the matter may be settled, and trouble neither you nor us with uncertainties hereafter, I come to ask your hospitality for today, tomorrow and the morrow after. The third morning from now, when my men and horses are rested, we leave for Lindum.”
“That also, Brother Lucian has told me; and that he made clear to you our position, our shortage of stores after the winter. We are not used to feeding four hundred men and as many beasts over and above our own poor folk that it is our duty to care for.”
“There is good pasture hereabouts on the Fen fringes. My horses will not graze it out in three days. Most of us are hunters and we can find our own meat. And as to the grain and stores —” I leaned over him; I had not begun to be angry yet, because I could not believe that he grasped the true situation, and I was trying to make him understand. “Does it not seem to you, Holy Father, that the men who kept the roofs on the barns have earned the right to some of the grain in them? Many of us are wounded, all of us are spent. We must have three days’ rest.”
“But if the grain is not there?” he said, still kindly. “It is not there, my son. If we feed you for the three days that you demand, we shall not have enough left to keep us even in perpetual fast, until the harvest comes again.”
“There is still grain to be bought in the Lindum corn market.”
“And with what shall we buy this corn? We grow our own food; we are not a rich community.”
I was angry now, and I said, “Not so poor, either, that you have nothing to trade. Saint Alban’s foot lies in a goodly casket, even the bones themselves would fetch a good price.”
He jerked upright as though at the prick of a dagger point, and his face purpled under his eyes, while the watching monks gasped and crossed themselves and cried “Sacrilege!” and swayed like a barley field in a flurry of wind.
“Sacrilege indeed!” the Abbot said in a grating voice. “Sacrilege worthy of the Saxon king, my Lord Artos, Count of Britain!”
“Maybe. But to me, my men are a greater matter than a few gray bones in a golden casket!”
He made no answer; indeed I think he was beyond speech for the moment; and I went on relentlessly. I had meant to ask for the horses at a fair price, ill though we could afford it. But now I had decided otherwise. “Holy Father, do you remember a certain saying of the Christos, that the laborer is worthy of his hire? Two days ago, I and my Companions saved this place from the fire and the Saxon sword, and for that, our hire is three full days’ keep, and the four best horses in your pastures.”