Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

I imagined how it would be to lunge forward and impale him, the fork’s middle tine nailing his Adam’s apple and the other two bracketing his neck. I wondered that the danger didn’t even occur to him as he scowled at me over the weapon, pointed right at him. He wouldn’t keep past a week.

‘Who’d be a monk?’ A boy my age came across, dragging a full sack. He looked pale beneath the grime, his grin fixed, as if he knew exactly what I’d been thinking.

‘It has to be better than this?’ I lowered the fork.

‘I’d go mad,’ he said. ‘Praying, praying, more praying. And reading the bible every single day. And all the copying. All that quill work, copying other people’s words, never writing their own. You want to spend fifty years doing that?’ He hushed as one of the lay brothers stomped over from the hedgerow.

‘More work, less talk!’

And we set to digging.

It turns out there’s a certain satisfaction in digging. Levering your dinner from the ground, lifting the soil and pulling fine hard potatoes from it, thinking of them roasted, mashed, fried in oil, it’s all good. Especially if it wasn’t you who had to tend and weed the field for the previous six months. Labour like that empties the mind and lets new thoughts wander in from unsuspected corners. And in the moments of rest, when we orphans faced each other, mud-cheeked, leaning on our forks, there’s a camaraderie that builds without you knowing it. By the end of the day I think the big lad, David, could have called me an idiot a second time and survived.

We trudged back to the monastery as evening shadows tracked across the rutted fields. They fed us in the fraterhouse with the ordained brothers at one long trestle, the lay brothers at another, and the orphans crowded around a low square table. We ate faggots of potato mash fried in pork fat with autumn greens. I hadn’t tasted anything better in for ever. And the boys talked. Arthur told how his grandpa used to make shoes before his sight got dim. Orscar showed us the iron cross his da gave him when he went away. A heavy thing with a circle of red enamel at the crossing point. For the blood of Christ, Orscar said. And David told how he might sign up to be a soldier for Lord Ajah, like Bilk and Peter who we saw patrolling along the Brent. They all spoke, often at once, laughing, cramming in food past their words, speaking of foolishness, games they played, dreams they had, ‘might-have-been’s and might-be’s’. The easy talk that children share, that Will and I had shared. Strange to think of these boys bound about by so many rules and seeming so free, and my road-brothers, unbound by law or conscience, yet so guarded and bitter in their conversation, each word edged and weighted, as if they were every one of them trapped and seeking escape each moment of their lives.

The orphans slept in their own dormitory, a solid stone-built building, slate-roofed, clean within though bare as a monk’s cell. I lay among them, comfortable on my straw mattress. Sleep found us all quick enough. Honest labour will do that for you. But I woke in the darkest hour and listened to the night, to the skittering of mice amongst our straw, to the snores and the mumbling of sleep-tied tongues, to the hunting owls and the chuckle of water through the mill. I thought of my road-brothers, caught in dark dreams as their bodies lay scattered between the trees. They would wake soon, blood-hungry, and turn this way.

A monk came for us before dawn so we would be washed and ready for matins prayer.

‘No work!’ Orscar whispered beside me as he dressed.

‘No?’

‘It’s Sunday, idiot.’ David used a long pole to heave the shutters open. It made little difference.

‘Sunday’s for praying.’ This from Alfred, the peacemaker in the potato field.

‘And studies,’ said Arthur, a tall and serious boy of around my age.

It turned out Sunday held time for studies additional to those the monks arranged for us. First though, I sat through lessons on lettering, instruction on the lives of saints, and a session of choir practice – I croaked like a crow. An elderly monk arrived for the day’s last lesson, hunched around a black cane, eyes bright but pale beneath the grey fringe of his hair. He had a sour look to him but the boys seemed to like him.

‘Ah. New boy. What’s your name, young man?’ He spoke quick and high with just a creak of age.

‘Jorg,’ I said.

‘Jorg, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sir.’

‘I’m Brother Winter. No sir about it. And I’m here to teach theology.’ He paused and frowned. ‘Jorg, eh?’

‘Yes, Brother.’

‘I never did hear of a St Jorg. Now ain’t that a curious thing? St Alfred, St Orscar, St David, St Arthur, St Winter … ain’t you got a saint’s day, boy?’

‘My mother had it that St George’s day would serve. Jorg being a flavour of George.’

‘The Brettan saint?’ He made to spit and caught himself. ‘He fell out of heaven when the sea swallowed those lands.’