Valentine (4 page)

A bank of shallow windows were set up against the ceiling, perhaps thirty feet above Mary’s head, casting dusty beams of late-afternoon light against the opposite wall. Row upon row of skinny benches ran parallel to a bank of curtained confessionals, the wood ornately carved into splinter-intricate designs. The heavy drapes were pulled to the side of each one, showing that each closet was empty. Mary’s eyes scanned the small enclosures.

The curtains were all green.

She turned to the monk at her side, already shaking her head. “This isn’t the right place.”

His eyes glanced around the empty room before whispering in reply, “If it is confession you seek, I assure you this is where it is done.”

“No!” she half-shouted, the word echoing against the stones. She spun around. “There must be another—” Then her eyes landed on the single wooden box nestled in a far corner, separated from the bank of confessionals by a small arched passageway.

The curtain was red.

Mary half-ran to the solitary confessional, her dubious companion hurrying to keep up.

“No!” he hissed. “No that one!”

She reached the box and spun on her heel just as the monk caught up with her. “Fetch Father Victor. I’ll wait for him here.”

“You can no use that one,” the monk repeated. “It is for the bishop. Or the king. Or . . . I do no actually remember,” he admitted. “But no one may enter without permission.”

“I have permission,” Mary assured him, “and I’ll wait here as long as it takes.” She spun again to duck inside the confessional and flopped down on the narrow little bench hovering over the kneeler.

The monk stood there for a moment, his dark eyes glancing around the long hall again before leaning slightly into the closet.

“May I . . . join you?” he asked.

Mary extended her arm, placed her palm against his chest, and shoved. Then she grabbed the edge of the red curtain and whisked it closed, ensconcing herself in murky darkness.

“I can wait here if you wish to think about it.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “
Victor
,” she reminded.

She heard the monk’s defeated sigh from beyond, and then his reluctant footsteps fading away.

With the tomblike silence settling around her like the lingering smell of old incense, Mary began to tremble. And then, as if at last she had awakened from a very long nightmare, she acknowledged the reality of where she was, how very far from home, and what she had done. She reached into a fold of her kirtle and found the little gold coin, tied into a knot of belting, and gripped it in her sweaty fist.

And then Mary went to her knees on the hard wooden ledge, leaning her forehead against her hands folded around the coin, and began to pray.

I
t had taken Valentine nearly a half hour to locate the skinny old abbot, and then nearly that amount of time again before Victor would pay him any mind. In the end, Valentine had had to resort to calling in a low voice before the head of the abbey turned to him with a cross expression. But once Valentine had begun to explain that there was a strong-headed young Englishwoman who had insisted on taking up residence in the red confessional, all traces of annoyance were gone. In fact, Victor had abruptly left Valentine standing in the corridor with no more explanation than a hasty thanks.

By the time he came into the dining hall for the last meal of the day, Valentine was extremely cross. It didn’t help matters that his late arrival forced him to take the only empty seat available, at the table of the abbey’s misfits.

That the seating arrangement also included two of his own friends did not appease him.

He stepped over the bench and then sat down between Roman and the albino with a grimace, shaking his head slightly at his giant friend’s inquisitive look.

Then Valentine gave a grumbling sigh and ran a hand up over his face as the stench of Brother Wyn climbed his person like the attentions of an unwanted whore.

“Gah.” He gasped into his sleeve.

“Shh,” came the admonition from behind, and Valentine glanced sideways as Stan reached around him to set a long wooden bowl of sliced bread in the center of the table. Valentine had forgotten that it was Stan’s turn to serve, and it only made his mood darker—only two more days before Valentine would be forced to slave in the kitchens for an entire week like some tavern wench.

Stan moved to the next table as another monk came down the line, setting platters of fish and potatoes before each diner, followed by another monk with the water pitchers. Across the table from Valentine and to the left sat one of the twins, either Vladislav or Ladislav, then Valentine’s friend Adrian, who seemed even more sickly outside of the library. The other twin flanked Adrian on the right. That, at least, was something to be grateful for; Valentine would not be forced to contend with the twins reaching across his own trencher, each trying to give his food away bit by bit to his brother with increasing forcefulness. Valentine hoped it wouldn’t deteriorate into yet another hour of bits of herring being flung about.

Then the mucousy clearing of a throat sounded, and all eyes dropped to the table top—except Valentine’s, who dared to glance at Victor’s second in command, the fat Brother Hilbert. As if the rotund monk knew that Valentine would dawdle, his beady eyes landed on him. Valentine complied by bowing his head, if only to get to the mediocre meal faster.

The blessing went on for a quarter hour. At the last “Amen,” Valentine swooped his hand around in the air before his face in a sacrilegious farce, and then pulled his trencher toward him as the dining hall broke out in conversation at last.

“You lost your little bird, I suppose?” Roman queried matter-of-factly as he tucked into his fish.

“Oh, no, my friend,” Valentine argued. “Indeed, I know exactly where she is. I brought her back to the abbey with me.”

The big blond man coughed as if he would choke. He chewed quickly and swallowed. “You brought her
here
?”

On Valentine’s other side, Brother Wyn’s attention had been drawn at the mention of an animal.

“Bird, you say?” he demanded, his sudden movement bestirring the stench of him. “What species?”

Roman leaned forward to look past Valentine at the albino. “You wouldn’t be interested. Quite common.”

“It’s not a white-throated needletail, is it?” Brother Wyn insisted. “I’ve males but no female.”

“Shocking!” one of the twins gasped, and then the brothers twittered and snickered.

“How precious,” Adrian slurred as he pushed his food around his trencher. “The pair of you can take your birds for air together, tuck them in at night, sing them lullabies. . . .”

Now Valentine wished they had been forced to keep their silence. “It is only a pilgrim, Adrian, insisting Victor hear her confession in the red—”

But before he could finish his sentence, Roman had swung his beefy left forearm into Valentine’s chest, knocking him backward from the bench to land on the stone floor. His cup went flying from his hand, his robes up around his knees.

“What the—” Valentine began, but Roman was already at his side, helping him to his feet.

“My apologies, Brother,” he said, and then as he yanked Valentine from the floor, Roman turned his back to the table.
Shut up,
he mouthed. “My arm must have slipped. It still pains me at times.”

Valentine was straightening his robes when his eyes caught sight of Adrian between the snickering twins. Adrian looked as though it had been he who had been knocked on his arse. Valentine shook off Roman’s attempt at help.

“Pilgrims
are
quite common,” Brother Wyn agreed, waving his hand and dismissing the whole display as uninteresting.

Before Valentine and Roman could take their seats once more, Stan came striding through the hall toward them. He slid his still-laden tray of fruit onto a table but did not look at his friends.

“Let’s go,” he said in a low voice as he passed.

Across the table, Adrian stood up and limped away without a word, and Vladislav and Ladislav descended upon Adrian’s abandoned trencher like vultures.

“Brother, you must take this food.”

“No, you most certainly should have it.”

“I could not sleep knowing you had gone without. I insist—”

“No,
I
insist.”

Valentine looked to Roman, who wore a grim expression as he said, “You heard Stan. Let’s go.”

“What is this about?” Valentine demanded as he and Roman followed Adrian’s hitching gait through the passageways of the abbey. Certainly their destination was the library, but why would Stan call them from the meal so conspicuously?

“You shouldn’t have spoken of the red confessional in the hall,” Roman admonished.

“And Stan has enchanted hearing that he would know of my indiscretion?” Valentine scoffed. “It is a confessional in an abbey—why is that a secret?”

“Do you hear nothing Victor says?”

“I try no to,” Valentine admitted.

Before his friend could chastise him further, they reached the double doors at the end of the long corridor. Adrian had already pulled one open just enough to slip inside, and Valentine and Roman followed, the latter being certain to close both doors behind them.

They moved through the long, silent room that was the abbey’s official library. Perhaps sixty feet in length and thirty in width, the ceiling reached upward of twenty feet at the height of its arch. The walls were lined with shelves from the richly carpeted floors to the elaborate ceiling, and contained thousands of tomes in a hundred languages. In this room one could find material on any subject imaginable, and many had been transcribed by Melk’s brethren.

Between the laden shelves were long, narrow floor-to-ceiling windows, leaded and cased with stone, the panes tinted in various colors similar to those in a cathedral, to protect the library’s interior from the harsh light of the sun while still being bright enough to allow for reading without the danger of open flames. The effect was such that the room’s atmosphere was as muted as the light, hushed by the upholstered chairs, the dim gleam of the tables.

It was suppertime at the abbey, and so the library was empty, fortunate for the friends as they crossed to the particularly wide bank of shelves in the center of the right wall of the library—the only section that was not uniform with the rest of the room’s design. If one should look up at the exterior of the wall from the hill outside the abbey, it would appear that this section of Melk abutted the gatehouse directly.

Valentine and Roman were at Adrian’s heels as he reached up with one arm—the sleeve of his robe sliding back to his elbow and revealing the misshapen muscles in his forearm—and pulled out a tome that seemed as anonymous as the ones stretching to either side.

But at the book’s tilt, a soft click and then a softer creak sounded and a section of the bookshelf shifted. Adrian reached along the bottom of one of the shelves for the shallow handhold and pulled the secret door open.

Then the trio stepped into one of Melk’s greatest treasures—the abbey’s
true
library, and the place that had been Valentine and his friends’ private refuge since their arrival late last October.

This room, too, was filled with manuscripts, but unlike the ones that lined the shelves in the outer library, these books were not copied texts produced by the monks; they were original manuscripts written in the hands of their authors. Works on astronomy, mathematics, anatomy, architecture; writings of saints, popes, emperors, and kings—priceless firsthand accounts from the greatest geniuses who had ever lived.

Victor and Constantine were already within, seated at the large, square table in the center of the room; Valentine thought they must have come up through the gatehouse. Adrian went to his high-backed chair set at an angle to the long, deep window that, from the outside, appeared to be nothing more than an arrow slit.

Victor wasted no time. “We have a problem, gentleman,” he said, and his eyes locked on Valentine’s.

Valentine sighed and then spread his arms wide and sank into a bow. “I am very sorry that I allowed the woman to breach the sanctity of the little wooden box.” He arose and let his arms fall as he looked around at his friends. “But I can assure you that I had no choice. She was determined to wait for Victor there, and I dared no refuse her lest she scream down the walls and disturb your holy silence.”

Stan shook his head. “That’s not the problem, Valentine.”

Roman took a seat across the table from the abbot, but Valentine preferred to stand. Close to the exit. He was not certain that this little meeting would not yet find him at fault.

Victor continued. “You acted correctly in showing the lady to the red confessional, although I do wish you had paid more heed to my instructions for its use.”

“Again, I apologize. I do hope the sack of coin we gifted you at our arrival helps to offset your annoyance with me,” Valentine said, speaking of the Chastellet gold carried by Roman on the men’s long flight from Damascus—the portion that had not been lost to Saladin’s guards.

“It is in speaking of that coin that I have my own confession to make,” Victor continued.

Valentine’s interest was piqued, and so he pulled out his chair and sat at last.

“Perhaps a month after your arrival here, I entered into a deep introspection, not only of the facts that Constantine and the rest of you had presented to me about the charges against you all, but of my own soul and conscience.”

Valentine glanced at Stan. How much of this explanation did Constantine already know? Likely all of it, Valentine mused. But that suited him well enough; Constantine Gerard was the general, after all. If anyone knew now how to be deliberate in actions and planning, it was he.

“I worried that beyond giving the four of you asylum at Melk, there was little I could do to help you extricate yourselves from these wicked accusations. I want nothing more than for your names to be cleared. For Constantine to be reunited with his wife and son; Adrian, his family; Roman, his good name and livelihood returned.” He paused when his eyes fell on the last man, and a prickle of irritation tickled at Valentine’s spine. “And for you to have back the life that you wish, Valentine.”

Not even God himself is capable of that,
Valentine thought.

“I at first intended to use the coin to further Melk’s ministries,” Victor continued, “but, after reflection, it seemed neglectful, when I had the four of you here, whose futures were so imperiled.” Victor took a deep breath. “And so I dispersed the coin from Chastellet.”

Valentine leaned forward in his chair. “I beg your pardon—you did what?”

“I gave it away,” Victor said. “To trusted religious contemporaries at houses in all corners of the earth.”

“You gave away the coin,” Valentine repeated.

“Wait, Valentine,” Stan requested.

“Yes. With instructions that requested any monk, prior, abbess, sister, priest—anyone connected to me or to Melk—to send any with your names on their lips to me here, with the stated intention of ‘bringing justice to the traitors of Chastellet.’”

From his chair near the window, Adrian Hailsworth muttered, “That’s brilliant, Victor.”

“Indeed,” Roman chimed in. “For where else could one go with information of such a dangerous nature if not to his trusted priest? And then word could be sent safely here to you, and to us.”

“Exactly,” Stan said. “And now it seems as though Victor’s efforts are at last beginning to bear fruit.”

The abbot nodded. “It has taken a bit longer than I’d hoped, and this first encounter was not at all what I expected.” He looked up at Valentine again. “We have a problem.”

“So you have said,” Valentine replied.

“The woman you brought into Melk is betrothed to be married in only a few months, but the family priest—a man I indeed know personally—has discovered that the marriage cannot take place because of an agreement entered into by the woman’s parents shortly after her birth.”

“A childhood marriage?” Roman guessed.

“Yes,” Victor confirmed. “Her parents died less than a year after the agreement was made. The woman has no choice but to track down the man to whom she is bound and have the record expunged. There can be no trace of the man’s name connected to her, lest the match be lost.”

“I fail to see the correlation,” Adrian mused from his chair. “Why would your priest friend send her to us? Are we to locate her wayward spouse?”