The Bone Quill (15 page)

‘As long as we can see the particles of light,’ Renard murmured, ‘they’re all okay.’

The Middle Ages

The Monastery of Era Mina

S
olon
sat up with a bump the size of an egg on the back of his head. He sensed the peryton’s presence before he felt its touch. The wind had shifted direction and become a warm breeze. The force of the receding tide drained the water from the pool where Solon was submerged, flipping him on to his stomach.

Coughing and gagging, drenched and shivering, Solon expelled a bucket’s worth of slimy, salt water. At the sharp insistent prod of the peryton’s gleaming antler, he sat up. His head ached. Leaning back on his elbows, he looked around the darkening cove for the stranger and his painting. Where had he gone?

Satisfied that Solon was okay, the peryton leaped on to the rocks in front of the cove and took flight, disappearing like a spray of stars in the darkening sky. Solon watched it go with groggy eyes.

After Vespers in the Abbey, Solon headed for the refectory with the other brothers for his evening meal. Overhead, heavy clouds scudded across the sky. Brother Thomas, the monastery’s master baker and passable cook, lamented as he served Solon his meal that a bad storm was coming in from the lands to the north.

‘Ach, I can feel it in here,’ he said, rubbing beneath the knee of his weakened left leg.

Brother Thomas’s leg injury was the consequence of once wrestling a boar on to a spit for a royal feast. The weakness in his leg had done little to impair his movements. With or without the aid of a crutch, he was fast on his feet.

Brother Thomas had a number of body parts that talked to him on occasions of astrological and agrarian significance. His nose smelled a full moon rising, his ears heard the turnips growing. Solon’s favourite was generally Brother Thomas’s eye.

Brother Thomas had lost an eye at the point of a Viking sword when he was a boy. A leather eye patch created by the Abbey’s tanner covered the socket. On the evening of the winter solstice, Brother Thomas would lead his fellow monks to the water’s edge where he’d lift his patch, turn the cross-stitched hole towards the setting sun and predict the severity of the remaining cold season.

‘The eye sees ice forming on the horizon,’ he’d claim with great import before leading the procession back to the great hall for mulled wine.

Solon was never entirely sure if Brother Thomas’s gift was another special quality of the monks of Era Mina, or simply one monk’s unique way of making sense of the world.

He took his meal outside to the rocks below the kitchens, willing to tolerate the chill of the night in order to think about all that had happened that day: the eavesdroppers, and the oddly familiar stranger; Brother Renard’s story of the twin stags, and the crack on his head.

It was too much to make sense of without counsel. Not for the first time, Solon wished that his beloved master were not so hampered with his own trials. Digging into the remains of his rabbit stew, he found the last morsel of meat before licking the bowl clean.

His head still thumping, he climbed back up to the kitchens: two square brick buildings close to the water and away from the main monastery. Keeping the buildings separate ensured that any stray fires would be doused before they reached the monastery. At the top of the rocks, Solon felt the first drop of rain.

In matters of the heavenly bodies and his own, Brother Thomas was rarely wrong.

W
hen
the storm hit the islands, it brought winds that bent the tallest trees and rains that lashed down in grey sheets, pushing the sea to the heels of the monastery. That night, the islands were not a safe place for man or beast. The drenched monks settled the horses in the stables, locking the doors and barring the shutters moments before thunder hammered the sky and arrows of light shot across the darkness.

Watching the storm from the door of the kitchens, Solon remembered Brother Renard. The young man had promised to return, but the blow to his head had made him forget. He had to get back to his old master’s cell right away, but with the water rising so quickly in the courtyard, finding another path around the monastery was prudent.

He briefly contemplated drawing a way through the ferocious storm. Then he heard Brother Renard’s voice in his head, speaking words from long ago.

‘The powers of a monk of Era Mina must be used for the glory of God and the benefit of mankind, and never for selfish gain.’

Trying to avoid getting drenched or drowned were not worthy reasons to indulge his fledgling abilities.

The sealed, waterproof catacombs were the only way. Solon shivered. The labyrinth of tunnels snaking under the monastery and its outbuildings held the martyrs of the Order, monks murdered during the early days of the monastery when the surrounding land was a haven for Saxon raiders and Pictish barbarians. Venturing into the catacombs meant passing the chamber of crypts, and passing the chamber of crypts meant passing the mummified bodies of those monks watching over the martyrs as they made their way to Paradise.

The nearest entrance to the catacombs was in the cellar under the kitchen. Solon pushed through the kitchen doors and down the cobbled steps to the cellar. He had to roll away two full wine barrels to get to the small oak door that was his entrance to the tunnels.

He lifted an unlit torch from its bracket on the wall, dipped it in the bucket of sheep’s fat kept for this purpose and struck a flint. The flame filled the room with long shadows. Solon shoved open the door and, holding the torch high above his head, climbed down the steep, narrow steps into the catacombs.

A rough layer of sand whispered beneath his feet. It had seeped into the tunnels from past storms and regular blustery island winds. At the first tunnel, Solon stopped and rolled the collar of his tunic up under his chin. He started forward in the direction of the north tower, where Brother Renard’s room was located. Rats scuttled over his feet the deeper into the maze he went, colonies of bats whipping overhead when they swarmed from their nests high in the alcoves. His torch was disturbing their peace.

As he went on, the tunnels became lower and narrower, forcing Solon to hunch over as he walked. The violence of the storm above ground was barely audible down here.

After a few yards, the stench in the catacombs was so overwhelming it forced Solon to breath through his mouth. The smell got worse the closer he came to the chamber of the crypts. The stink of the thick clay, sand, sulphur and cod liver oil that the monks slathered over bodies of the dead soon caked Solon’s throat. And as if those smells were not awful enough, Solon could detect the cloying perfumes from the wilting petals in the monk’s anointing oils, trying and failing to mask the stench.

He had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. When he did, he gagged, swallowed bile and began to cough noisily. Slapping his hand over his mouth, he was suddenly afraid his coughing would disturb the dead.

A mighty gust of fetid air suddenly knocked out his torch flame, followed by a loud crack up ahead in the crypt – as if someone had broken a branch, or snapped a twig.

Someone else was down here.

Solon backed up against the wall, admonishing himself for daring to come down to the catacombs alone. This was one of the most sacred places on the island – and also the scariest.

He heard angry hisses, a mumbled yelp and then what sounded like footsteps. But not ordinary footsteps. Footsteps that sounded as if someone was dragging a heavy weight behind them.

Could the dead walk?

Pressing his back to the wall, Solon set down the useless torch and eased away from the chamber, the stone scratching through the cloth of his tunic. The noises appeared to be following him. By the time Solon realized that he had come too far, it was too late. He had backed into a dead end.

With no other choice, Solon retraced his steps towards the chamber, keeping his hands flat on the wall to guide him. But the dragging footsteps and the muffled voices had shifted. Now they sounded to Solon as if they were
behind
him. That was impossible. Behind him was a dead end.

The air felt as if it was being sucked from the catacombs. Had someone opened a door along one of the other tunnels?

Keeping his back to the damp, scratchy wall, Solon slipped into the crypt itself. He dropped behind one of the tombs and listened.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

His skin crawled as if a rat had dropped on to his shoulders and scampered down his back. The realization of what he was hearing struck him with full force. He fought back his horror.

Man or beast, something was breaking the bones of the mummified monks.

Using his finger as a quill, Solon sketched an image hastily on the sandy ground. As soon as he finished, he cowered behind the tomb, cupping his left hand in his right. At first, he didn’t believe his faculties had served him at all. Then a tingling tickled his finger, a tiny spark shot out from his knuckle and a tiny flame burst to life on the edge of his nail. Solon wanted to cheer, but in the circumstances thought better of it.

Stretching himself across the ground while staying tight up against the tomb, Solon cupped his finger so that only a pale glow was visible. He peered out into the circular chamber.

Brother Cornelius was climbing up the wall towards one of the most ancient mummified monks, strapped into a niche in the ceiling of the crypt. The mummy’s head was bowed against his chest, his skull hidden under a rich, hooded, purple cowl. Brother Thomas was doing the same thing on the other side of the chamber. They were both reaching up under the monks’ habits and snapping their clasped hands apart as if searching for something.

‘Cornelius,’ said Brother Thomas suddenly. ‘Where is that light coming from?’

Solon froze.

‘The eternal torches must still have some glow about them, Thomas,’ soothed Cornelius. ‘That is all. Hurry. Our Prophet says time is our enemy. He must have the quill and
The Book of Beasts
, or we are all doomed. That Solon returned unscathed from Skinner’s Bog and survived the Grendel has already complicated matters.’

Brother Thomas dropped to the ground, dragging his damaged leg across the chamber. He then awkwardly climbed up to the niche where the third and last mummy was ensconced.

What prophet?
Solon thought in confusion.
What quill?
Cornelius’s and Thomas’s macabre behaviour and furtive conversation were beginning to terrify him. Clearly, he wasn’t meant to have returned from Skinner’s Bog at all.

He had seen and heard enough to know that he was in grave danger. He wiped the image from the floor with his sleeve, the light extinguishing from his finger immediately. Crawling backwards out of the chamber, he stood up and sprinted back along the dark tunnels, towards the kitchen cellar and out into the storm.