First pages, THE RELIC, by M.E.Greene © 2009
Gentle reader, whomever you are, here they are today for no particular reason... and as always, subject to change. Hope you like them.
Part I
6 June 793
CHAPTER 1
The next low tide was ten hours away. Ten hours of unimaginable freedom.
Aidan had no idea why the abbot had sent him, a novice, on such an important errand, but the task was simple enough. Cross the land bridge and meet a rich pilgrim at a tavern on the mainland shore. Then at the next low tide, when the land bridge reemerged, escort the pilgrim—and the pilgrim’s costly gifts—back to the monastery.
He couldn’t remember the last day he’d spent outside the scriptorium’s somber walls, yet here he was walking out on a June morning, free as you please. The sun laid a crown of warmth upon his black curls, which had yet to be shaved on top in the tonsure worn by the ordained monks. A seabreeze snapped his robe. He had seen eighteen summers and this was an achievement in the border countries where wild Scottish tribes ruled the north, Saxon warlords clashed to the south, and all manner of warlike Gaels and Britons roamed about in the west. To reach the age of forty in such a place was to be an old man. Still, adult or no, on this day Aidan made a child’s game of avoiding the tiny coils of sand raised by creatures underneath the mudflats. He picked up smooth stones and whipped them over the shallow water with a scribe’s strong right arm.
Blessed, impossible freedom.A lay brother had been sent with Aidan to haul the pilgrim’s things. Kitby was often given such chores because he was as big and mute as an ox. Kitby wasn’t even his real name, but a corruption of the term for his lot in life: Kitchener’s Boy. He had arrived on the island as a small child, all alone. Out of pity, the monks let him stay. He’d since earned his keep in the monastery’s cookhouse, but voiceless and unlettered as he was, he’d never been able to tell anyone what his kin had christened him.
Kitby was well ahead of Aidan now, who took no offense at being left behind. Kit was always hungry and months had passed since Easter with its roast mutton and white bread. Brother Kitchener was resourceful, but there were only so many ways to prepare the monks’ normal diet of herbs and vegetables. By contrast, Hild, the tavern’s alewife, would lavish fowl, fish and honey upon any monk, novice or lay brother who crossed her threshold.
Aidan was wondering if Hild had made meat pies that day when a peculiar noise floated over the clamor of the seashore. He scanned the dunes that ran like a spine alongside The Pilgrim’s Way, but saw nothing. He cupped a hand to his ear and the sound gradually became distinct. It was a song.
A song was not so strange in itself. He and his fellow monks chanted day and night at maddening intervals. A tiny collection of slaves—men pledged to the abbey by the Lord of Bamburgh—sang mournful or obscene tunes in the village as they did the worst work on the island: processing sheepskins to make the vellum upon which Aidan and the other scribes wrote.
This song and the voice that sang it were unlike either of those or anything else.
The singer was still far away, but headed toward him. Her appearance was as remarkable as her voice. She bore a huge bundle of parsley fern and resembled a walking tree. As they moved closer to one another, he changed his mind about the tree. The ferns framing her face made her look like snake-haired Medusa, the mythical beauty whose gaze turned men to stone. He chuckled and wondered if he dared to look her in the eye.
By the time they were face to face on either side of one of the tall wooden posts that marked the land bridge, she had fallen silent. She was barely more than a girl. He couldn’t resist teasing her.
“Enjoy this fair morning, Sister Tree, but see that you don’t take root. If the tide comes in, you’re done for.”
She bobbed respectfully, but frowned. “How ungallant, Brother Aidan, mocking a poor slave girl,” she said.
Her pale gray eyes held his gaze for a heartbeat. Then another. She kept walking toward the monastery and he wondered if he should apologize. If he knew her name or retained the power of speech, he would have called after her. Instead he watched until she disappeared among the dunes of Lindisfarne.