For all their wealth, the monks were not decadent. The brothers of the Order tilled their own land, and the sisters from the “women’s house” sowed grain and made the best fine linen in the Nova Terra.
The company were led silently into a dark chapel by cowled monks in black and brown habits. Even the captain was silent and respectful. The monks on the gates had included some with robes over full armour, and two stern-faced nuns had received Amicia and her sisters. The darkened chapel was the size of many a fair town church, with rafters sixty feet above a marble floor of interlocking hexagons. The chapel was so dark that Amicia could not see her hand in front of her face-literally, for she tried. She was led off to the right, where the nuns and novices of two orders stood in silent communion.
No bells rang.
It was the last moment of Lent.
There was a rustling in the dark, at the back of the church, a single candle was lit by a monk, and a priest of the Order of Saint Thomas began to pray.
The single candle illuminated the magnificent chapel of the Abbey of Bothey. Fifty years ago, one of the most gifted pargeters Harndon had ever nurtured had painted the whole chapel in one summer in the Etruscan manner; floor to ceiling paintings of the events of Christ’s life and Passion. The gold leaf alone was staggering, swimming in burnished metallic light even with only a single lit candle-and the quality of the painting was superb. Saint James was martyred, Jesus healed a man made blind and the now-sighted man rebuked the military governor for unbelief, his armour a bronze-gold against the brilliant polished lemon-gold of the background.
And then monks and nuns began to sing, as did the knights of the Order, the brother sergeants and the sisters. There were twenty knights in their robes standing in the choir stalls, and a dozen sisters of the Order from the two houses in Southern Harndon. For Amicia and her sisters, it was a homecoming-a delight mixed with sadness. And the mass was one that Amicia would never forget, sung so well in a chapel so redolent with both splendour and meaning, surrounded by her own Order-and by the men and women of the company with whom she’d shared the road. As the first hour slipped away and the congregation sang the rolls of saints and martyrs, a taut expectancy filled the church, and as the bell outside tolled the middle of the night and the birth of a new day, Amicia lit her candle from a torch held by a knight of the Order, and the church sprang from darkness to bright light, and many of the monks and nuns produced hand bells from their robes and rang them joyously, so that the shrill riot of bells seemed to drive the darkness out and replace it with the throaty roar of gold and the coming dawn.
By the time the host was consecrated, every one of the company were on their knees on the hard stone floor-even the captain.
And after mass-as they celebrated their risen God-there was wine in the abbey’s paved courtyard, and an air of festivity that many would not have associated with monks and nuns living a life of cloistered virtue. Monks in brown habits lay under the stars on the smooth grass of the cloister’s central yard, discussing theology, and nuns sat in among the pillars of the double cloister, sipping strong red wine and laughing. Most of the knights of Saint Thomas were unarmed and unarmoured, the rest stood with their swords incongruous with their black monkish robes and academic caps, while the nuns of the Order-more worldly, and more given to the practice of medicine than to mystical contemplation-laughed louder and drank harder. For an hour or more, the threat of civil war was forgotten by most in the glory of God’s resurrection.
Amicia found herself in a spirited conversation about the theological failings of the Patriarch of Rhum and the Archbishop of Lorica. The Minorites who held the abbey had more than a few hermetical practitioners among them-practical men and one woman who could make small fires, light candles, and the like. They were outraged-and deeply uneasy-at the sudden change in direction. They had thought themselves blessed, and were now told to believe themselves accursed. Many of the knights had some turn of talent-and having already had their Order declared anathema, they were in no mood to discuss the intellectual possibilities or the failings of the scholastics in Lucrece.
As a nun of the Abbey at Lissen Carak, Amicia was both welcome and something of an oddity-the northern sisters hardly ever left their fortress. Amicia discovered in a few minutes of conversation that she was notorious as both a powerful mage and as a woman licensed to preach.
Ser Tristan, an older Occitan knight of the Order, frowned and admitted that he might not have been in favour of any woman saying mass.
“But you are one of ours,” he said. “And to hell with the archbishop.”
Sister Amicia wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or offended. She had been aware-at a distance-that there were factions in the church, but now she felt naive as she confronted their reality. Even in the midst of celebration, there were some to whom she was a hero, and others who clearly kept their distance.
She was reminded of her duty, and her place, over and over-a lesson in humility that she had the grace to accept.
After two cups of good wine and an hour of conversation, praise, censure, and a hundred introductions, she found that she was exhausted-almost too tired to sleep. While the knights who knew her from the siege carried her from group to group like a prize, introducing her to the monks, priests and nuns of both orders, Katherine and Mary had followed some of the other Thomasine sisters to the women’s house, and Amicia was on the point of asking Ser Michael for directions-she could scarcely keep her eyes open-when a small girl came, curtsied, and said Prior Wishart had summoned her. She found him in the outer yard with two secular knights she didn’t know and she put her hands in her sleeves and stood demurely, waiting. She was afraid she might fall asleep on her feet.
He glanced at her and smiled-a clear confirmation that she was to await him.
She allowed her eyelids to fall, and in the next few beats of her heart received a pulse of apprehension as great as she had ever known.
Something evil.
Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, but the low murmur of voices and the sound of celebration-from the town below them as much as from the yard-spoke only of the feast of Easter.
The prior came and took her hand. “I won’t keep you long,” he said.
He looked as tired as she felt.
“I need you to tell me anything you can,” he said.
“About Ser Gabriel?” she asked, understanding all too well.
“Sister Amicia, we’re teetering on the brink of civil war-or sliding past it.” Prior Wishart took her arm and led her to the abbey walls and then up stone steps to the crenellations. In the distance, on the edge of the dark horizon, there was a glow. And the smell of smoke was no longer hidden by incense.
“Where is my duty now?” he asked.
She didn’t think he was asking her.
“Can I trust him?” the Prior asked her.
She put her hands to her mouth. She almost giggled-a reaction of fatigue. “Yes,” she said.
Prior Wishart peered at her from the darkness. “You have a-hmm-relationship with him,” he said.
“I have not slept with him,” she said a little too quickly.
“Sister, I have been a soldier and a priest for a long time.” He looked out into the night. “If I thought you had then I would not curse you, but neither would I look to you for guidance. Some men-more men every day…” He paused. “They wonder if the man who is called the Red Knight-” He shrugged. “If he is the King’s bastard son. I have heard it said many times now. And I have a report that his mother, the duchess, is suggesting the north should make its own king.”
Amicia put her whole weight against one of the merlons. “Isn’t our Order supposed to be above this sort of thing?” she asked.