“Fa… Father De Guilbe, I was told that you wished to speak to me,” Cormack managed to stutter, though his eyes never left Giavno as he spoke.
“Where have you been?” the leader of Chapel Isle replied, and Cormack couldn’t miss the undertone of his voice, so full of disappointment.
He turned to regard the man, and paused just a few moments to collect his thoughts and to try and sort all this out before answering, “Fishing. I go often, and with Brother Giavno’s blessing. I landed two this day-one of good size-”
“You fish from your boat or from another island?”
“The boat, of course-”
“Then why were you on an island?” Father De Guilbe demanded. “It was an island, was it not? Where you met with the barbarian woman?”
Stunned, Cormack shook his head. “Father, I…”
This time De Guilbe did not interrupt, but the stammering Cormack couldn’t find a response anyway.
“You freed them,” Father De Guilbe accused. “During the frenzy of battle you slipped into the tunnels and freed our four prisoners.”
“No, Father.”
De Guilbe’s sigh profoundly wounded the young monk. “Do not compound your crime with lies, Brother.” He paused and sighed again, shaking his head, before finishing, simply, “Cormack.”
“Four souls for Blessed Abelle released to pursue heathen ways that will surely damn them for eternity,” Brother Giavno put in harshly. “How will you reconcile your conscience with that, I wonder?”
“No,” Cormack said, still shaking his head. “We thought they were not eating in protest, but it was an enchantment, perhaps. Or…”
“Brother Giavno followed you out onto the lake, Cormack,” said Father De Guilbe, and again, his omission of Cormack’s Abellican title struck hard at the young monk’s sensibilities. “He heard you with the woman-all of it. And while your lust could be rather easily forgiven and atoned for-brothers often surrender to such urges-the action which precipitated your tryst is a different matter.”
Cormack stared at him blankly, and indeed, that was exactly how he felt. He replayed his conversation with Milkeila in his head, and quickly recognized that an eavesdropping Giavno had heard more than enough to erase any doubt, or to defeat any protests coming forth from him. So he stood there and took Father De Guilbe’s stream of anger, and he felt an empty vessel through it all, though he would not let that venom fill him.
“How could you betray us like that?” De Guilbe demanded. “Men died to protect that treasure: the souls of four Alpinadoran barbarians. Four of your brethren are dead, and a fifth might soon join them! What would you say to their families? Their parents? How would you explain to them that their sons died for nothing?”
“Too many were dying,” Cormack said, his voice barely above a whisper, but the room went absolutely silent as he started to speak and all heard him well enough. “Too many were still to die.”
“We would have held them!” Brother Giavno insisted.
“Then we would have murdered them all,” Cormack retorted. “Surely there is nothing holy in that action. Surely Blessed Abelle-”
The name had barely escaped his lips when a bolt of lightning erupted from Father De Guilbe’s hand and threw Cormack back hard to slam into the doorjamb. He crumpled to the floor, disoriented and writhing in pain.
“Strip him down and tie him in the open courtyard,” Father De Guilbe instructed, and Giavno waved a couple of monks over to collect the fallen man.
As Cormack was dragged away, Brother Giavno faced Father De Guilbe directly. “Twenty hard lashes,” De Guilbe started to say, but he stopped and corrected himself. “Fifty. And with barbs.”
“That will almost surely kill him.”
“Then he will be dead. He betrayed us beyond redemption. Administer the beating without remorse or amelioration. Beat him until you are weary, then hand the whip off to the strongest brother in the chapel. Fifty-no less, though I care not if you exceed the mandate. If he is dead at forty, administer the last ten to his corpse.”
Brother Giavno felt the deep remorse in Father De Guilbe’s voice, and he sympathized completely. This business was neither pleasant nor pleasurable, but it was certainly necessary. The fool Cormack had made his choice, and he had betrayed his brethren for the sake of barbarians-barbarians who were assailing Chapel Isle at the time of Cormack’s treachery.
That could not stand.
Brother Giavno nodded solemnly to his superior and turned to leave. Before he got to the door, De Guilbe said to him, “Should he somehow survive the beating, or should he not, put him in a small boat and tow him out onto the lake. Leave him for the trolls or the fish or the carrion birds. Brother Cormack is already dead to us.”
More than two hours later, the semiconscious Cormack was unceremoniously dropped into the smallest and worst boat in Chapel Isle’s small fleet as it bobbed on the low surf at the island’s edge.
“Is he already dead?” one of the monks asked to the group congregating around the craft.
“Who’s to care?” another answered with a disgusted snort-which pretty well summed up the mood. Many of these men had been friends of Cormack’s, some had even looked up to him. But his betrayal was a raw wound to them all, and too fresh a revelation for any to take a step back and see any perspective on this other than the harsh sentence imposed by Father De Guilbe.
For other friends of theirs, like Brother Moorkris, had died in protecting the prisoners and the chapel. Arguing about whether or not Father De Guilbe’s decision to keep their prisoners and accept the siege and battle was not their prerogative, nor had any found the time to do so. Their jobs had focused simply on survival, on beating back the enemy whatever the reasons for the enemy being there.
On a logical level, some might come to understand and accept Cormack’s treacherous actions. On a visceral level, the fallen brother had gotten exactly what he had deserved.
“If he’s still alive, he’s not long for it,” another brother said.
Giavno stepped forward and tossed a red beret, Cormack’s powrie cap, into the boat atop the prostrate, bleeding man. “It is a wound to every heart on Chapel Isle,” he said. “Cast him out that the currents might take him to a cove where the beasts will feast, and when he is gone we will speak no more of fallen Brother Cormack.”
Giavno turned and walked away and a group took hold of the small craft, guiding it toward the water. One man paused long enough to take the beret and set it upon Cormack’s head, and when he looked at the curious stares coming at him for the action, he merely shrugged. “Seems fitting.”
They all laughed-it was either that or cry-and brought the boat out onto the lake, giving it a strong shove to get it away from the island far enough so that one or another of the many crisscrossing currents caused by the underground hot streams that fed the lake would catch it.
“If it washes back in, I’ll tie it to another and tow it far out,” one brother volunteered, but that wasn’t necessary. As a brilliant orange sunset graced the western sky, the stark, low silhouette of Cormack’s funereal boat at last moved out of sight.
EIGHTEEN
Dame Gwydre’s Trump
He walked with a sure and determined stride that mocked time itself, for he had seen seven decades of life and could pace men one-third his age. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, but his thick muscles had slackened, and his skin, so weathered in the northern sun, had sagged a bit. Still, no one doubted that the large fist of this man, Jameston Sequin, could flatten a nose and take both cheekbones with it!