Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

The Nuban once rumbled me a song from the Brettan Isles. Hearts of oak it said they had, but the Nuban told it that if their hearts were of the oak then it was from the yew that their blood had been brewed, a darker and more ancient tree. And from the yew come their longbows, with which the men of Brettan have slain more men in the long years than were felled with bullet or bomb in the short years of the Builders.

I waited by the church doors when the songs ran out, but despite the scraping of pews and the mutter of voices, no one emerged. All fell silent and at last I set hand to the doors and pushed inside into the quiet hall beyond.

One monk remained at prayer, kneeling before the pews, facing the altar. The others must have left through another exit leading into the monastery complex. The light from windows of stained glass fell around the man in many colours, a patch of green across his head making something strange of his baldness. It occurred to me as I waited for him to finish bothering the almighty that I didn’t know how to ask for sanctuary. Acting had never featured in my skill set, and even as the words I would need sprung to mind I could hear how false they would ring, falling bitter from a cynical tongue. Some tell it that ‘sorry’ is the hardest word, but for me it has always been ‘help’.

In the end I decided to go with my strengths. I didn’t wait for the monk to quit his silent moaning and I didn’t ask for help.

‘I’ve come to be a monk,’ I said, with the silent proviso that hell would freeze and heaven burn before I let them give me the haircut.

The man stood without haste and turned to face me, the window colours sliding across the grey of his habit. His tonsure left a garland of black curls around a polished scalp.

‘Do you love God, boy?’

‘I couldn’t love him any more.’

‘And do you repent of your sins?’

‘What man doesn’t?’

He had warm eyes and a soft face this one. ‘And are you humble, boy?’

‘I could be no more humble,’ I said.

‘You’ve a clever way with words, boy.’ He smiled. The lines spreading from the corners of his eyes declared him given to smiles. ‘Perhaps too clever. Too much cleverness can be a torment to a man, setting his wits against his faith.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘In any event, you are too young to become a novice. Go home, boy, before your parents notice you’re gone.’

‘I have no mother,’ I said. ‘And no father.’

His smile eased. ‘Well now, that’s a different matter. We have orphans here, saved from the corruptions of the road and educated in the ways of our Lord. But most come to us as infants, and it isn’t an easy life, our boys work hard, both in the field and at their studies, and there are rules. Lots of rules.’

‘I came to be a monk, not an orphan, a brother, not a son.’ I didn’t want to be a monk but just being told ‘no’ lit the corner of a fire in me. I knew myself broken, to burn over every refusal, to feel my blood rise at the slightest provocation, but knowing and fixing are different things.

‘A good number of our novices are drawn from boys maintained here.’ If he sensed my anger he showed no sign of it. ‘I myself was left on the church steps as a baby, many years ago.’

‘I could start that way.’ I shrugged as if letting myself be talked into it.

He nodded and watched me with those kind eyes. I wondered if his prayers were still echoing behind them. Did God speak back to him or did the Old Gods whisper from the yew, or perhaps the gods of the Nuban called out to him across the straits from the crowed heavens above Afrique?

‘I’m Abbot Castel,’ he said.

‘Jorg.’

‘If you follow me we shall at least see that you get a meal.’ He smiled again, the sort of smile that said he liked me. ‘And if perhaps you choose to stay we might see whether you really could love God a little more and be somewhat more humble.’

I spent that first day digging up potatoes with the twelve orphans currently under St Sebastian’s care. The boys ranged from five years to fourteen, as mixed a bunch as you could want, some serious, some wild, but all excited to have a new boy amongst them to break the monotony of mud and potatoes, potatoes and more mud.

‘Did your family leave you here?’ Orscar asked the questions and the rest of them listened. A short boy, lean, ragged black hair as if cut in haste, and mud on both cheeks. I guessed him to be eight.

‘I walked,’ I said.

‘My grandpa brought me here,’ Orscar said, resting on his digging fork. ‘Mam died and my father never came back from the war. I don’t remember them much.’

Another taller boy snorted at the tale of Orscar’s father, but said nothing.

‘I came to be a monk,’ I said. I drove the fork deep and turned up half a dozen potatoes, the biggest of them skewered on the tines.

‘Idiot.’ The largest of the boys shouldered me aside and lifted the end my fork. ‘Scratch them and they won’t keep past a week. You gotta feel the way into the ground, dig around them.’ He pulled the wounded vegetable free.