"You must be cold and hungry," Sister Antonia said. It was the first time she'd spoken since greeting them, but it had been a calm, friendly silence. "Please, this way."
Another flight of stairs and they were in what he suspected had been the Abbey before the Change, rooms modern-seeming but plain, dim except for the one lantern and occasional gas night-lights burning on wall brackets, turned down low behind their glass shields. Unlike the guardroom they were far from empty, but the people in them looked to be ordinary civilians, not monastics, many children and young mothers among them, asleep-not surprising given the late hour-on improvised pallets. There was a surprising absence of clutter or mess or smell, and Nigel knew from bitter experience how hard that was to avoid when you crammed displaced people into unfamiliar surroundings.
"This was our guesthouse," Sister Antonia said. "These folk are refugees from our outlying villages and farms."
Which confirms my guess: probably the town itself is full to the gills, if the surplus is here.
"Baths here, Sir Nigel, for you and your men. And in the next room for you, Lady Astrid, Lady Eilir. Then something to eat, and Abbot Dmwoski will be pleased to speak with you."
The bathrooms were literally that, with a row of big tin tubs, and all the plumbing post-Change, with pipes running from methane-fired boilers. Water steamed, and Nigel sank into it gratefully, flogging himself with raw willpower to keep from letting the infinitely welcome warmth soothe him into sleepiness. Alleyne and Hordle were much more cheerful, but then they were still a few years short of thirty. Hordle gave a snort of laughter when water splashed onto the tiled floor as he lowered his huge, hairy, muscular bulk into the largest tub and found it a very tight fit.
"Never 'ad much to do with monks," he said meditatively. "Even the Crow-ley Dads." That Anglican order had grown spectacularly in England since the Change-several hundred times, relative to the surviving total population. "Eilir says this lot have a good reputation. Certainly the one who showed up when we had the brush with the bandits and Sir Jason: "
"Father Andrew," Alleyne put in.
"He was a good sort. Tough as nails, mind you, but not mean with it. And the militiamen with him, they were just farmers and cobblers or what-'ave-you, but they liked him-couple of them knocked back enough to let their secrets out, if you know what I mean. They had nothing but good to say of Abbot Dmwoski."
Alleyne nodded thoughtfully. "They must be fairly formidable to have lasted this long, though, Father. They're right between Molalla and Gervais. This fort would be invulnerable to anything but paratroopers, but they had to survive long enough to build it, and hold onto the lands around it."
Nigel called up the map in his mind; Gervais to the west, Molalla to the east, both slightly north of the monastery and its lands, both the seats of Association barons from the second Change Year. This place had been in the pincers, since the Protectorate first organized itself.
"And they've been very cooperative so far," he said. "But the proof of the pudding, and all that."
"Speaking of which, I could do with some pudding," Hordle said. "Or a crust, come to that."
Nigel had been conscious of hunger; that brought it home, a sharp, twisting pain in his gut. They stayed in the hot water just long enough to soak out the bone-chill of a long, hard day spent wet and cold; he suspected that the two young men lingered a little for his sake. Robes and sandals were offered as their clothes were taken away to be cleaned and dried; the light gear in their packs was stowed in another set of plain rooms, these with beds and woolen blankets, jug and table, and a crucifix on the wall of each; then they were led to a refectory.
That was a long, dimly lit room with trestle tables and benches and a reader's lectern. Nobody was there but themselves and an exhausted-looking squad who were probably the night watch, and a teenage boy minding the hearth; a big pot simmered quietly in the fireplace over a low bed of coals, and everyone ladled themselves bowls of thick lentil stew with chunks of salt pork and onion in it, and took fresh brown bread and butter and cups of some hot herbal infusion that tasted acridly pleasant. Nigel smiled quietly to himself as he spooned up the stew; hunger really was the best sauce, something he'd learned a very long time ago. That was the only thing that made much of what a soldier had to eat tolerable, and this was far, far better than a good deal of what he'd choked down in various bivouacs.
When they'd finished an older monk came to their table, a man with swept-back silver hair that still had a few blond streaks in it, round glasses, a square chin and an elaborate pectoral cross on the breast of his black robe.
"Abbot Dmwoski?" Nigel asked, though he'd expected someone younger from the descriptions.
Behind him Astrid coughed tactfully. The monk gave her a nod and smile, and then shook his head.
"I'm Father Plank, Sir Nigel, the prior here. I was in fact the abbot, but I resigned a week after the Change, since the office obviously required a younger and more vigorous man with different skills-this way, if you please."
He had the same soothing air of trained calm as Sister Antonia, and he led them through the guesthouse, through new-looking cloisters, and into an older building with a red-tiled roof in the same comfortable silence. There was a smell of clean soap and incense and candle-wax, and once in the distance a musical chanting-Gregorian, perhaps Verbum caro factum est, though it was hard to tell precisely. The office at the end of their travels showed gaslight under the door; within it were plain whitewashed walls, bookshelves, filing cabinets, a desk, chairs, and an angular painting of the Madonna and Child before which another man in a black robe knelt, his eyes closed, rosary beads moving through his fingers as his lips moved. The Englishman noticed that a bedroom let off this office, visible through a half-open door; small, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, and starkly furnished with an iron cot and a small chest of drawers. The only other furniture in it was an armor-stand and a rack for sword, helmet, poleax and metal gauntlets.
Eilir and Astrid made a silent gesture of reverence towards the icon; so, to his surprise, did John Hordle. He was a little less astonished when the big man gave him a wink, and Eilir tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. Dmwoski rose gracefully, despite his stocky build; that was apparently all muscle.
"Forgive me," he said when the introductions had been made; his hand was as sword-calloused as Nigel's own, and possibly stronger. The accent was General American, with a slight hint of something rougher beneath it. "Time for private prayer has been scarce lately."
He indicated the chairs with a wave of the hand, nodding in friendly fashion to the two young women who'd been here before, and the older monk sat quietly beside his desk.
"Father," Nigel said, a little awkwardly, and uncertain how to begin.
He'd been a courteously indifferent member of the Church of England like most men of his class, profession and generation, but despite the religious revival that had swept the survivors in his homeland during the terrible years, he'd never become comfortable with men of faith.
Even my darling Juniper makes me a little uneasy at times. But they were here to sound the ruler of Mount Angel out, to evaluate him as well as to make an offer of joint action.