The Brothers of Glastonbury

The Brothers of Glastonbury Read Free

Book: The Brothers of Glastonbury Read Free
Author: Kate Sedley
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Mystery & Detective, rt, blt, _MARKED
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of obligation on my part. On the second of October I should be twenty-four years old, at that period in my life between the callowness of youth and the harder-headed realism of middle age, and I was looking for love. Because the monks of Glastonbury had taught me to read and write I was familiar with several of the great romantic epics concerning such characters as Robin Hood and Maid Marion, Lancelot and Guinevere, and also with the Roman de la Rose.
    I was in a strange mood in that late August of 1476, a mood which the past blissful summer had only served to heighten. I was in no frame of mind just at that moment to return home to Bristol, to the dull round of domesticity and fatherhood, but wanted instead to be plunged into some fantastic adventure, to become a knight on a white charger riding to the rescue of a damsel in distress. (Which, as things turned out, proved to be just as well, although the reality was somewhat more prosaic than my imaginings, as life inevitably is. All the same, I was to come very close to achieving the unbelievable, to becoming a part of that mystic, mythical world of our wildest dreams.)
    *   *   *
    I stirred with first light to find, early as it was, the scullions and kitchen-maids already up and busy, great fires burning on both hearths, one on either side of the kitchen doorway, baskets of newly baked bread being carried in from the bakehouse, shaving water set to boil in cauldrons, razors being stropped by the body-servants of both Duke and Bishop. I extracted my own razor from my pack, begged a little hot water and began scraping away at the night’s stubble. (Because I am Saxon fair, my beard does not show as much as some men’s, but I am never happy until I have removed it.)
    I glimpsed my little kitchen-maid fleetingly, but she was too occupied running to and fro on errands for the cooks to be able to do more than wave from a distance. I filched some oatcakes from a table where they had been left to cool, sweetening them with a little honey. Jugs of ale had been placed ready to be carried into the great hall by the servers, and I managed to take several swigs from one of them without being noticed. After which there was nothing left to stay for, so I replaced my cloak and razor in my pack, and took it with me to the well just outside the scullery. I drew up a bucket of water to wash my face and hands, cleaned my teeth with the bit of willow bark I always carried for the purpose, and was ready to resume my journey.
    The morning light had a brilliant quality, carrying the promise of another fine day. The scent of roses wafted over a nearby wall from what I guessed to be the ladies’ pleasure garden, while the smells issuing from the bakehouse were no less entrancing, although the latter also had the effect of making me hungry. I had breakfasted very lightly for one of my height and girth, and could see no hope of getting more sustenance; everyone in the kitchens was far too busy. If I walked steadily, I reckoned, I would be inside Bath’s walls by dinnertime, and I knew of several stalls and shops there selling excellent pies and pasties. So I shouldered my pack and made my way across the bustling inner courtyard, through the passage between the twin towers, across the barbican ditch and so to the outer ward of the castle.
    The chapel bell was ringing for Prime. The chapel itself, a plain, rectangular building with buttresses at each corner and dedicated to Saint Leonard, stood close to the east gate, and as I walked by I was astonished to see that the Bishop was just about to enter. Accompanying him was the Duke of Clarence, still unshaven and looking more than a little annoyed at having been forced to rise so early. On a sudden impulse, I joined the little throng of servants and retainers following their masters in to worship.
    Immediately my suspicions were aroused, for those sudden and inexplicable actions of mine usually meant that God was once more hovering at my elbow,

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