"Indeed," he said, coldly. The way he said it frightened him. It was absolutely detached from the young man he had been when he woke up that morning. "But even with his help they are damned."
"I do not doubt it for a moment," she said, sadly.
He couldn't understand her sadness; he would, but only when it was too late.
Once the women were quartered in the Manor, Alymere rode out to join his uncle. The storm had abated, but, with midday fast approaching, it was still bitterly cold. But the cold was inside him, in his soul, so that was hardly surprising.
Seventeen
Three more settlements burned on the road before them.
More dead were laid out in lines on the hard ground. More widows and orphans left behind. The senselessness of the slaughter sickened Alymere.
The smoke led Alymere and Sir Lowick toward the coast and the storm-tossed sea.
Long before the spires of the isolated monastery on Medcaut6 came into view, Alymere knew where their journey would take them. There were other settlements the raiders could have hit, but nowhere else they might find a blind monk and the Devil's Bible, and Alymere didn't doubt for a moment that the reivers sought the book.
He spurred his mount on, leaning forward in the saddle, his right cheek pressed to the horse's mane, and urged the animal to run faster and faster as they broached the hilltop. Coming over the top he saw Medcaut and the monastery little more than a mile or more ahead. And what a sight they were, with the harsh whitecaps of the sea roiling and surging as they climbed up the pebbled beach and broke on the cliffs beyond them. Medcaut rose up like the hands of a drowning man.
Medcaut was a tiny tidal island linked to the mainland by the Pilgrims' Way, a stone causeway that was submerged twice a day beneath the North Sea. The monastery was a place of pilgrimage for the sick who hoped to find remission from their suffering; not that there would be any succour today. Snow capped the rooftops and lined the high monastery wall.
But that was not what had Alymere driving his heels into his horse's flanks again, harder still. Great wreaths of steam billowed out of the animal's flared nostrils as it raced down the hillside, hooves drumming on the hard-packed winter earth. The wind tore at his face and at his cloak as it billowed out behind him. At his side, Sir Lowick roared his fury and spurred his warhorse on, pulling away in front of him. For a moment Alymere couldn't tell where the horse's misted breath ended and the smoke began.
The entire west wing of the monastery, including the cloister bell tower, was choking in thick smoke. Great black clouds of it belched up into the blue sky. For a moment, Alymere imagined he could see faces in the clouds — the faces of the dead they had cremated along the way. And then he saw the first licks of flame lash over the wall as the fire climbed higher and higher.
Alymere rode over the dunes and down onto the beach, the ground shifting beneath the horse's hooves as it negotiated the loose shale and finally, as it reached the water's edge, the sand. Alymere urged his horse on and, side-by-side with his uncle, plunged into the sea. The great whitecaps splashed up around their horses' bellies before they were more than a dozen steps into the water, making it impossible to go any further.
They stared at the smoke and the flames.
It would be hours before the tide turned. The causeway was more than two miles in length, curving like a Saracen blade through the bay to the rocky promontory where the monastery burned.
There was nothing either of them could do. The sea kept them back.
But it also served to trap the reivers. There would be a reckoning, cold comfort though that was, for the monks of Medcaut.
Impossibly, Alymere was sure he could hear their screams across the water; hundreds of voices crying out. They swelled within him until all else ceased to exist. He swung down from his horse and splashed deeper into the water until the waves were lapping around his throat. The mail shirt weighed him down, threatening to drag him under. There was no way he could strike out and swim all the way to the island. It just wasn't possible. Of all the lessons that he might have learned at Sir Lowick's side, this one — that he could not save everyone — was the hardest of all to learn.
"Forgive me," he said, the wind whipping away his words and carrying them off over the sea. Whether they reached the dying monks or not he had no way of knowing. Not that their forgiveness could have eased the burden on his soul. He sank to his knees and let the water wash over his head, hoping, at least, to drown out the voices.
But even with the waves crashing down over his head there was no relief.
He held his breath until it burned in his lungs.
The saltwater stung at his eyes.
Then, finally, as the pain in his chest grew too much to bear, he opened his mouth and breathed in mouthful after mouthful of water, taking it down into his lungs until it filled him.
He struggled then, thrashing.
He felt his uncle's grip on his shoulder as he hauled him up to his feet, and came up out of the sea in a plume of spray.
Lowick dragged him out of the water and back up to the beach, and drove the water out of his lungs. The stuff frothed at his lips and dribbled down his cheek. He coughed, spluttering up a mouthful of saltwater, and again, harder this time as the knight pushed on his ribs, pushing down over and over until he coughed up every last drop.
And then he screamed.
In that sound Lowick imagined that all of those others could be heard at last, making Alymere a conduit to give voice to their suffering.
He lay on his back, the sea lapping almost tenderly around him, waiting for the ebbing tide to retreat, and knowing that every minute that passed with him staring up at the darkening sky only served to damn the island's inhabitants all the more completely.
"The tide will turn, lad. Best to rest up so we can ride out when it's full-dark."
Alymere did not move.
"There's nothing we could have done," the knight said.
"We could have ridden harder," Alymere said bitterly. "You could have woken me instead of leaving me to sleep all night through. We didn't have to stay to burn the dead or escort the women back to the house. We didn't have to do any of those things, and if we hadn't, we could have done something."
"It is pointless to think like that, boy. We had to do all of those things. I couldn't wake you, you were dead to the world. We couldn't leave those women to mourn alone; it was our duty to protect them, and when we could not protect them, to see that they were cared for. We owed that much at least, if not more, to their dead. This conflict you feel warring within yourself is only natural. You would be no sort of man if you did not feel it. But don't talk to me of 'doing something,' boy. We did everything we could. The one thing we cannot do is turn back the tide."
But Alymere knew he was wrong; they could have done something.
Even if they had reached the coast an hour earlier, it might have been enough to beat the tide.
And for want of an hour all of those lives were lost.
Where was the justice in that?
The justice, he realised, was in the sword that hung from his hip.
He pushed himself to his feet and stood for hours at the water's edge, watching the sun leave the sky. The tide would turn. Already it was beginning to retreat, shrinking back from the beach to reveal more and more of the causeway. An hour, maybe two at the most, and it would have pulled back far enough to make the crossing safe.
The fires still burned behind the monastery's high walls. They would rage 'til dawn.