In the Court of the Yellow King Read Free Page A

which he finally succumbed was shallow, and fitful. His head tossed. Low, guttural mumbles issued from his sore-scabbed lips.
    Only when the sky began to lighten and the fog gave way to rain did the monk sink into a true slumber. Gehilde, her own weariness weighing upon her, drew a blanket to his shoulders. The bandage about his face had come askew, and with a murmured prayer she adjusted the cloth over the weeping wounds where once were eyes.
    She stretched. She sighed. She rubbed her brow, and temples. For a moment, the thought of her narrow bed beckoned, tempting her with its promise. But day had dawned, if damp and dreary. The morning business of Marymeade Abbey must be done.
    It had been built about the remains of a stone fort of the old Romans, moss-grown ruins, tumbled walls and archways, a few intact inner chambers with floors of tiled mosaic. From a hilltop, it overlooked the winding ribbon of the river valley. Behind it, beehive-dotted flower meadows and orchards sloped away toward the green farms and grazing lands around the village.
    The nuns kept the bees, collecting combs and honey, making candles and sticks of colored sealing-wax. These were their main source of livelihood in addition to what they received from the church. They also brewed fruit-wine to sell and trade.
    At any given time, some three dozen women called it home. Not all were sworn to holy vows; some were lay-sisters, widows or forsaken wives. Their father-monastery was St. Neot’s of the Stave and Crook, located further inland and upriver, some days’ ride away at Shepsbury. Twice monthly, or more often during holidays, priests would come from St. Neot’s to lead services, and supervise the running of the abbey.
    And, when one of their monks might fall injured or ill, Marymeade was where they were sent to be tended as they recovered.
    Monks such as Brother Oston, this poor and damaged soul. And Brother Camden, to whose room Gehilde now went. She found her sister there – Gamyl, her sister by birth as well as in their holy order. Gamyl was the younger, and of slighter frame. Otherwise they much resembled one another, with fine features, fawn-brown hair beneath head-coverings of white linen, and eyes the blue of ripe bilberries.
    “How does he fare?” Gehilde asked.
    Gamyl glanced up from where she sat upon a stool at the monk’s bedside. “He woke for a while, spoke for a while,” she said. “But he still does not know me, or himself, where he came from or where he is.”
    Brother Camden, though gone to grey, had been a hale and hearty, vibrant man... jovial in his humor, stalwart in his faith. Now he lay stricken, the entire right side of his body gone feeble and frail. The right half of his face hung slack, those corners of eye and mouth drooping. Age seemed to have draped him in a sudden cloak of additional years. If not for the slow swelling of his chest with each breath, he might have been a corpse awaiting the shroud.
    “He inquired again after someone called Silvia,” Gamyl went on, “then wept a bit, bade me be sure to remember to feed the cat, and...” She trailed off with an expressive, hopeless gesture at the monk.
    “Did he take any broth or gruel?”
    “Not much, no.”
    They watched over him together a moment, each speculating on who this Silvia might be. Mother? Sister? Lost sweetheart from Brother Camden’s youth, before taking his vows?
    Then Gamyl spoke. “How fares Brother Oston? I heard him through the night.”
    The weariness settling onto her again, Gehilde nodded. “Worse than ever. I had to bind down his wrists for fear he’d do himself more harm.”
    “What could have caused—?”
    “It is not for us to wonder,” Gehilde interrupted sharply.
    “But after Brother Rubert, sister, surely you must—”
    “I must not, I do not, and neither shall you.”
    They crossed themselves at the mention of the unfortunate monk’s name. He had come to their care from St. Neot’s greatly troubled, greatly