BROTHERHOOD OF SHADES
Dawn Finch
Dedication
For my two biggest fans – my daughter Eden and my dad
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One – Abbey Boy
Chapter Two – The Boy with No Name
Chapter Three – D’Scover
Chapter Four – The Good Sister
Chapter Five – Death Day
Chapter Six – Old Friends
Chapter Seven – The Keeper of the Texts
Chapter Eight – Two Boys
Chapter Nine – Reallocation
Chapter Ten – Lessons for Life after Death
Chapter Eleven – The Senior Council
Chapter Twelve – Demon
Chapter Thirteen – Witch Hunt
Chapter Fourteen – Freedom Farm
Chapter Fifteen – Edie
Chapter Sixteen – Friend of the Texts
Chapter Seventeen – The Queen’s Magician
Chapter Eighteen – A Vision in White
Chapter Nineteen – Ancient Sisters
Chapter Twenty – The Reading Room
Chapter Twenty-One – Onslaught
Epilogue
D’Scover’s World
About the Author
About Authonomy
Copyright
Chapter One – Abbey Boy
A Benedictine Monastery in Hertfordshire – 1534
The small dark room was filled with the stench of bodies, a harsh, acidic smell of unwashed flesh and decay that clung to all those who passed through. A bare flame guttered and spat on its fatty candle as two men, clothed in black robes with a white cord binding their waists, leaned over the two ragged bundles on the floor.
“The mother is dead?” The older man spoke.
“She lingered long enough to hear my words, but the pestilence was too strong in her.”
“And the boy?”
They both turned their attention to the sweat-stained rags that loosely covered a body-shaped bundle, unconscious and yet still clinging to his dead mother.
“He sickens as his mother. I cannot say if he will clear the night.”
“He has no one?” enquired the older man.
“None have come here, and it is too late to find kin tonight. We do not even know his name.”
The older man straightened his back and winced as it clicked straight.
“Put him with the others in the huts, and tell Father Dominic he shall need three to pass this one over.” He walked towards the door, turning back just before he left. “And order the gates closed: we shall have no more of these fouled peasants this night. I am too weary and there is no more space. We shall wait until morning and then see how many more have died. It is not as if anyone will enquire after them. London cares not how the plague lingers in these forsaken places.”
“I shall have one of the men move him.”
“They are busy,” the senior monk snapped. “He is not heavy; move him yourself.”
The younger monk nodded his head in a small bow of deference to his senior and turned reluctantly to lift the sodden child from the filthy floor. The bundle was indeed light and the monk easily carried the boy to the door, kicking it open and stepping out into the cool blue of the late summer evening. The clean air rushed at him and he felt dizzy as he breathed in and filled his lungs, trying to clear the stench of death from his nostrils. He had no desire to rush across the courtyard of the abbey to the huts which acted as a hospital for those who had a faint chance of survival.
His scrawny load did not burden him and so he walked first to the main gate to find the boy whose duty it was to watch it. Finding him asleep, he kicked the slumped figure hard to wake him before ordering the gates locked for the night. That done, he started back to the huts.
The air in here was worse than in the mortuary as the sisters refilled the censers all day, burning the sticky yellow incense to drive off the vapours believed to carry the pestilence. Incense had always made the monk sicken and, no matter how many years he spent surrounded by its choking grip, he always felt bile rise as the smoke leaked into his lungs, and this time was no exception.
“Sister Goodman, take this boy from me,” he called into the darkness.
From the shadows a figure emerged, robed in grey smoke from the golden ball swinging from the chain in her hands. As she drew closer, her pale, round face became visible and he could see how the last few years in this diseased place had taken its toll on her. She looked as though a great sorrow had pulled her features down until she had no muscles left in her face to fashion a smile. He understood this and wondered for a brief moment when he himself had last smiled, but in times of plague there was little to smile about.
This plague had stalked the land for too many years, tearing the country into random divisions, not of rich and poor but of healthy and afflicted. Here, in these shabby buildings, lay a constant stream of country folk in varying stages of the disease, most too ill to even groan in their suffering. Those who were still alive enough to call out in pain were dosed heavily with an opium tincture to quieten them and ease their suffering. A mattress was never empty for long as another unfortunate came to fill the one left by the dead; as soon as someone had recovered enough to walk, they were sent back to whatever flyblown village they had crawled in from.
But at least it was better in here than in the hut where the child’s mother lay. That was a place of lost hope and final prayers. At least some left these gruesome buildings, if a miracle visited and the disease fled a body, as it sometimes did under the care of the sisters.
“How far is he gone?” the sister asked.
“He has no buboes yet, but he burns hard with fever,” he replied.
“Then there is still a faint chance for him.” Sister Goodman looked around for a space on the crowded floor. “Over there.” She pointed to a small, clear patch against the far wall.
The monk carried the boy over and lowered him to the grey straw-stuffed mattress before brushing himself down and turning back to the sister.
“Alive or dead, Father Dominic will call for him,” he said.
“Does he have enough assistants to grieve for all of these?” She waved her hand through the foetid darkness at the bundled shapes just visible in the dim light.
“We still have a number of mothers who have lost all; they grieve for every child that passes,” he sighed. “The deceased will be grieved for by friends and villagers; anyone left will be taken on by Father Dominic and his order.” “What will happen if the king wishes to destroy the monasteries? I have heard he means