Monk's Maze

Chapter 2-2

The great abbey of Iona loomed above her. Its ancient stone dug from the very soil and stacked in a great heavy pile reaching toward their god in heaven.

The tall pointed arch with its oaken door through which four could walk abreast and still feel small before their lord.

The bell tower reaching its great square head up, far into the sky. Narrow windows barely intruded upon the great facade, a mighty fortress through which their god looked down upon them and you knew he would forbid you entry.

Looked down upon her.

To one side, beyond a great stone well, stood a small chapel. The only bit of human-scaled architecture. While she’d never ventured around this side of the abbey, she knew St. Columba’s chapel from the map on her bedroom wall.

Saint.

Ha!

Bloodthirsty maniac. He’d killed his king because he wanted a copy of a book of psalms that didn’t belong to him. He’d come to Iona with a bodyguard of warrior monks and had wiped out the last of the Druids. Then converted all the Celts and Picts to worship his own lord of harsh retribution rather than their own gods of the natural order.

But the small chapel belied that. Told of a mortal man with a great belief.

She’d had belief once. Belief in the future. Hope of the future. Right up until the moment the Guardians had dragged her from Toby’s very warm bed.

Tried, quickly, and exiled to spend a year watching Iona.

Watching the home of the rabid saint who had started it all. Who had reached out from the grave and, through the hand of the Order of Iona, destroyed all the technology of the Earth. Had plunged the world into the Second Dark Ages that it might never survive.

Well we survived, damn you Columba and your sanctimonious dreams. We survived.

This entire island was a monument to his evil.

She could feel it pulsing about her. Pulsing through the very soil like a malignant heartbeat.

Pulsing behind her.

Behind her.

Grabbing her staff, she twisted about, sprang to her feet, and raised it against the foe.

The cross of St. Martin looked down upon her. The sun stood directly behind it and silhouetted it in black, a great halo ringing the center.

She stood in the shadow.

Of the great cross of Iona.

The pulse pounded out against her.

Drove her back.

Would have pushed her back down to her knees had she not her staff to prop her up.

Run.

She needed to run.

Unable to tear her eyes from the mighty cross and its burning halo of sunfire, she backed away. Stumbling backward, she fell over a body.

Cried out.

Her voice echoing off the great stone edifice of the abbey like a slap.

A corpse.

No.

A breathing man. With a large knot on his head. Sleeping like a babe beneath the ire of the cross beating down upon them.

She should leave him.

Colin.

Couldn’t leave him.

He’d be made mad by the pressure of the great pulse of evil.

As would she. If she weren’t already mad herself.

But there had been a light. And a man to go with it.

“Dinna think, Taylor. Move!”

She grabbed his hood and backed away quickly, dragging his inert body, never taking her eyes from the towering cross. Never escaping the sound of the dreadful heartbeat of the stone.

Colin woke to stars. Perhaps groggy from an excess of sacramental wine.

He didn’t recognize the stars.

His thoughts were slow and muddy.

Pickled.

And why did they keep moving? The stars not the thoughts. Those definitely were turgid.

He lifted his head and with a blast of pain he saw dozens more bright splashes of light beating against his optic nerves. He dropped his head back and felt the rough pillow that was propped there.

Once the pain had eased, he risked cracking open a single eye. A yellow ceiling, though it had the look of age rather than paint. He opened the other eye and could feel the pressure against his forehead, the source of the pain.

A gray rag moved across his face, dripping water which splashed in his eyes, forcing him to blink rapidly to clear them.

“Sorry about that.” The same voice from the island sounded contrite as she laid the cool cloth over his forehead. “The swelling is going away nicely.”

The initial shock of even such a light pressure was replaced by relief as the cold water soothed the fire that was his forehead. It reminded him of a day when he and Arianna had been climbing trees together, and he had fallen from the lowest branch. A great gout of blood had shot from his head, filling his cupped hands. At first he’d been fascinated by the color, and then he’d felt the pain and screamed with all the force of his eight-year-old lungs. One of the mothers had come running. The small cut had bled freely until they placed a piece of ice there and his bloodied hands had been washed and refilled with an ice cream cone.

He focused on the severe woman glowering at his forehead. Somehow he didn’t think any ice cream would be forthcoming.

“Where?” His mouth felt like mush. Mush on gravel. He hadn’t had anything to drink except for unintended rainwater since, when? Yesterday? How long had he been out? He searched his fogged mind but could recall no room like this in the abbey plans, unless it had been added since the plans were made two hundred years ago. Somehow he knew that wasn’t the right answer.

He croaked again at least as incoherently before she answered.

“Eileen nam Ban.”

Great. She didn’t speak English, French, or Spanish. And it didn’t sound like the little bit of Russian he knew. Hold it, Col, she’d spoken clearly enough just a moment before.

“Woman’s Island.”

Right. English, thick with ancient Scottish rhythms.

Woman’s Island. The thought circled back around. That rang a foggy bell. A tiny blot of rock and grass close to the Isle of Mull. The place where the monks of St. Columba had kept their wives, since they were prohibited on the holy island. Not on Iona, with its fertile fields, not on Mull with its great expanses and rolling hills. No, on a rock a kilometer long and two hundred meters wide.

But that meant he was no longer on Iona!

He jerked upright in bed only to be slammed back. His host hadn’t moved though she eyed him carefully. It wasn’t the pain in his head, though that certainly had not appreciated his efforts. He tried to raise a hand to his forehead, but it only moved a few centimeters before being stopped. He tried the other hand. No better. He twisted his neck to look down past his shoulder. A rough rope of hemp was wrapped there doing its best to cut off his circulation. He rocked his head the other way but he knew what he would see. More rope. Or perhaps the same one. He tugged delicately upward on one wrist. Sure enough, the other was pulled down where the rope ran under the bed frame.

“Is this really,” he swallowed hard to generate even a little moisture to soothe his throat, “necessary?”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Aye. I think it is.”

“By the saints.” He sank back into the pillow. He automatically tried to raise his hand to cross himself against his own curse, but the rope instantly reminded him of his predicament. He should never have cursed so easily. Especially not in front of a woman. This place was degrading his focus already.

Had he missed a service? Brother David had been most insistent that he follow the Rule and observe the hours of the day even though he was traveling, and he had. For a year alone in a tiny ship transiting to Earth he had kept the daily services. Even last night in the rain he had done his best to chant Compline through shivering lips.

Now he’d missed more in the last day than he had in quarter century on New Kells. The rituals had always comforted him. The prayers had been moments of peace that gave a rhythm to his day. Now he didn’t even know what time it was, nor what day.

She held a glass of water to his lips and he swallowed greedily. Some spilled down the side of his mouth and she took the water away despite his attempts to follow it upward.

“Don’t be getting my pillow all wet. I, for one, plan to sleep on it tonight.”

He was in a woman’s bed. For the first time since Arianna, he was in a woman’s bed. Well, he was sick. And tied down. He didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

“Why am I tied?” And then he remembered, a weight slamming him from behind, driving him to the ground. The only thing behind him other than the walls of the abbey had been the tall woman with the staff.

“Why did you hit me?” His forehead throbbed as he focused attention on it.

“That was na me. A wee rock had the honor of trying to brain you.”

“Then why?” he raised a wrist in question.

“You were mad enough to go to the crosses. I thought ye might yet be so, unbalanced and all.” She leaned in and her eyes, now the clear, shimmering gray of the abbot’s silken robe, inspected him carefully. Her dark eyebrows made them all the more startling. Her midnight-colored hair flowed about her head like a shroud. Her sun-darkened skin, so different from the pale tones of Arianna’s, was smooth and clear. He would guess that she was a half decade younger than himself, perhaps more.

Brother David said that at thirty-five Colin was a good age for this trip. Old enough to blend in without being noticed, young enough to still be resilient. And his twenty-five years without women would be enough of a habit to protect him from that transgression against The Order. Though St. Columba’s monks had married and kept their women on Eileen nam Ban, here on this very island, perhaps even in some early version of this house. But The Order now followed the Rule of St. Benedict and it was as a celibate he’d been raised and as such had become content.

“You seem calm enough.” She completed her inspection but didn’t move away. Her breath was sweet, like a mixture of honey and spring.

“I swear by the Lord God that I will never harm you.”

Her eyes widened, “Now that’s a queer thing to swear by.” He couldn’t imagine why, but at last she seemed satisfied by what she saw and undid his wrists. It wasn’t until he attempted to move his feet that he realized he was bound there as well.

When he was freed, he sat up slowly in the bed. His head spun and nausea burned at the base of his throat.

“Now, dinna ye be sick in my bed.” The order was sharp enough to make him clamp his jaw shut. He caught the tip of his tongue and the pain sobered him. He looked at the pillow. A single impression on the only pillow. He’d lain in a woman’s bed, but at least he’d been there alone.

This adventure was already turning out far differently than he’d planned. About now he’d thought to be in quiet conference with the inner cloister at the seat of government, calmly discussing the readiness of mankind to receive back the technology they had lost. Instead he was sitting on a madwoman’s bed with a blinding headache and the taste of blood in his mouth.

He inspected his forehead carefully with his fingertips and discovered a goodly lump and a sharp pain, but no more. No pouring blood to fill cupped hands, nor, he sighed, a cone of ice cream to soothe.

He carefully inspected the room. Barely three meters square, it was crowded by the two of them. A narrow bed, a chair in which his attacker still sat, and a window, curtained against the light that streamed in around the edges. An unlit candle rested on a small stand beside the bed. It had the faded cream color of tallow rather than a sharp waxy tone.

This woman burned candles of animal fat. He didn’t want to consider the implications if the whole society had slipped that far. His first assessment of the room’s color had been depressingly accurate: stone, mostly covered with a plaster of some sort, and once upon a time whitewashed but now a blotchy yellow sick with age. It was clean and well-kept, just weary.