look at it — a few inches closer in, and it would have passed clean through my heart. The cherry-red surface was waxy and cracked, but I saw none of the black rot that would have doomed me. Brother Luke examined the bandage, looking pleased enough, then took green ointment from a jar and smeared it over the wound. His fingers were merciless, pushing hard and pressing the medicine into every corner, and I had to bite my lip not to yelp. I wished it were Anna tending to me. When he had finished with my chest, he reached around, and I felt his fingers repeating the procedure on my back.
‘Did the arrow go clean through me?’ I asked, gasping out the words before the pain became too much.
Brother Luke pursed his lips. ‘If you mean to ask whether it went
I did not ask whether his hopes rested on his prayers or his skill.
When the ointment was applied to his satisfaction, he brought fresh bandages and wound them about me: first around my shoulder, then across my back, then around my upper arm to bind it to my side. By the time he had finished I was swaddled like a baby — and almost as feeble.
‘Now. .’ Under his supervision, the two novices helped pull me around so that I could swing my legs out of bed. They tugged on my boots, then lifted me as I tottered to my feet. My vision darkened again and I swayed, as if my legs had forgotten how to stand during their three days in bed — I tried to thrust out my arms for balance, but only one was free to obey.
Trying to hide his smirk, one of the novices reached out and steadied me while the other fetched some clothes. I watched them — they must have been about thirteen, the same age as I had been when I had worn those robes. Now, more than twenty years on, it was as if time’s edifice had collapsed, so that my past and present selves found themselves face to face inside those monastery walls.
And in the same clothes — for when the second novice returned he brought another grey habit like his own, which the two of them wrestled over my head. I managed to poke my right arm through the sleeve, though my left remained bound up inside the robe.
Brother Luke looked at me enquiringly. ‘Does it fit?’
‘A little tight.’ I had been smaller twenty years ago.
He nodded. ‘That will help support your shoulder.’ He squinted at me, tilting his head right and left as though judging my balance. Then he picked up a wooden staff that leaned against the wall and placed it in my hand.
‘There. Now you look a proper pilgrim.’
‘But where am I going?’
Brother Luke pointed to a door under the windows. ‘You can begin by getting some fresh air.’
I shuffled uncertainly to the door, onto a shaded balcony which ran along the front of a wide building. Behind me, regular doors studded the whitewashed wall, no doubt leading to the monks’ cells and offices; over the balustrade, the rest of the monastery sloped away down a gentle incline, a jumble of squat buildings, domes and faded tile roofs. It was a true fortress of God, bounded by a massive mud brick rampart whose single gate might have been ripped from the walls of Constantinople herself. Beyond it, a few miles distant, I could see the solitary hump of the rock where we had fought our desperate battle. Otherwise, the monastery stood alone in the desert.
I heard the quick slap of sandals and turned, expecting the infirmarian had come to examine me. Instead, I saw a monk I did not recognise, a tall man in a black habit, with a heavy gold cross swinging around his neck and a ruby ring on his finger. He walked with a brisk, confident stride, though his close-trimmed beard masked a face no older than my own. He came level with me and extended a rigid arm, holding his hand just low enough that I had to stoop to kiss the ring. It was an awkward movement with one arm tied to my side, and I almost overbalanced attempting it. He snatched his hand away with an affronted tut.
‘Are you the abbot?’ I asked.
He nodded, and tried to force a smile. It did not keep the disapproval from his eyes. ‘How is your wound recovering?’
I touched my good hand to my shoulder. ‘With God’s grace the infirmarian thinks it will heal. Though he tells me it will take weeks.’
The abbot avoided my gaze. ‘In a just world, you would of course remain with us until your wounds were whole.’
I thought I had recognised something about him, the way he stooped forward, too eager to cow you with his authority. I had seen him arguing with the infirmarian in the night. ‘You want me to leave.’
‘In a just world. .’ He twisted his hands together. ‘Your presence here is dangerous. You must know that.’
‘I don’t even know how I came to be here.’
‘The
It was the second time I had heard that name. ‘Who?’
‘They are rebels. . brigands. Your friends will explain. But when the caliph’s men do not return, he will send others to search for them. If they come here and find you. .’ The abbot turned and stared out into the desert, as if he was expecting to see the full might of the caliph’s army thundering across the horizon. But there was only a hawk, circling in the cloudless sky.
‘It is not easy living as Christians in a heathen land.’
‘I’m surprised the caliph allows it,’ I said.
The abbot gave me a sharp look, alive to any insult. ‘We pay our tributes, as he requires, and he leaves us to practise our vocation.’
I looked around at the encompassing wilderness, silent and vast. ‘You found a good place for it.’
‘Yes.’ The abbot nodded eagerly. ‘Yes. Here we can be apart from the world and live as Christ taught.’
‘And did Christ teach you to cast out the wretched and wounded who crawled to your doorstep?’ barked a voice from over my shoulder.
I turned to see Nikephoros and Aelfric walking towards me, and immediately had to stifle a laugh. Both of them were dressed as I was, in novices’ grey habits, but where mine was a little snug across my shoulders, theirs rode high above their knees and elbows, more like labourers’ smocks. Nikephoros, in particular, seemed utterly ridiculous — though his face was as proud as ever.
‘My Lord.’ The abbot bowed low — evidently Nikephoros had already impressed his rank on the man. ‘My Lord, you know we have extended you every kindness. But we live here to escape the snares of the world. We cannot allow them to intrude in our community, or they will destroy it.’
‘You will have to run further than this if you want to escape the cares of the world. How much do you pay the caliph to leave you alone?’
The abbot swallowed. He was young, and too used to ruling unchallenged over his little kingdom in the desert, I guessed.
‘We render Caesar his due, as Christ commanded.’
‘And if Caesar demands the three men who escaped his captivity?’
The abbot was backing away along the balcony. ‘No. No! I would never betray fellow Christians to the Egyptians. It is for your own safety that you must go, as much as ours.’
Nikephoros stared at him and said nothing.
‘A caravan will come past the monastery this afternoon. They will take you to the coast. There are men there — Christians — with ships.’
‘And what use are ships in winter?’
‘Winter does not trouble these men. They are accustomed to it. They will take you. .’ He shrugged, perhaps uncertain where three vagabonds who had crawled out of the desert might want to go. ‘Home.’
Despite myself, my hopes leaped to hear it. Nikephoros, meanwhile, took two quick strides and stared close into the abbot’s face. They were almost the same height, and for a moment their eyes met on a level plane.
‘If you betray us, master abbot, or deal unfairly with us, I will personally march back across this desert with a legion of the emperor’s troops at my back, and tear apart every brick of your monastery.’
