Brotherhood of Shades

BROTHERHOOD OF SHADES

Dawn Finch

Dedication

For my two biggest fans – my daughter Eden and my dad

Contents

Cover

Title Page

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

About the Publisher

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 to do so,” she asked.

“Father Dominic has a plan to deal with such a threat. He has not told us of the details yet, but I have heard it promises some hope.”

“Would that it works,” the sister added. “Help is greatly needed here, and I have lost another sister today.”

“Plague?”

Sister Goodman snorted, a small noise which may once have passed for a laugh, but her face did not match it in expression.

“No, she fled through the orchards and over the rear walls. I came in this morn and found she had taken the dress from one of the dead and had left her habit in torn strips on the floor beside the body. She is a fool as she will succumb for sure now that she has left God’s protection and will have no one to grieve for her as she is alone in the world – but she was young and listened to no argument anyway.” She breathed a deep and tired sigh.

“It must be near your time to leave, sister. When do you depart to care for the hidden texts?”

“In three days,” she said with relief. “The first are already in place. I and the remaining sisters will all arrive before the end of the month.”

“You shall be sorely missed here.” He patted her sturdy arm.

“No.” She shrugged his hand away. “There are others to care for these wretched souls. I have more than served the Lord here, and so it is time for a cleaner place. Are you finished, father? I must attend to my work before more die unnoticed.”

“No, that is all, sister.” He walked back towards the door. “Do not forget about the boy – try to keep him alive through the fever; it will be one less to find grievers for.”

“I shall do my best, but his fate is now the will of the Lord.”

The monk made his way back across the courtyard and through the cloisters to the main building. Entering through the north door, he passed through the dark and silent chapel into the labyrinth of cells beyond. He knocked gently on Father Dominic’s door.

“Enter,” a deep voice came from within.

Father Dominic was a big man, large in height, and weight, with fingers so darkened by inks that they resembled blood sausages. Before he had been called to take up holy orders he had worked with metal and his broad forearms carried many red scars from molten splashes. He surprised those who knew him by producing the most delicate and beautiful illuminated manuscripts. The atmosphere in his room was heavy with the oily smell of paint and a few flecks of gold leaf always decorated his thick beard from each time he licked his gilding brush.

“The hour is late, father. I was not expecting a visitor,” the big man said without looking up.

“I shall not interrupt you for long,” the monk replied. “I have come to tell you of a boy who is in the huts. He has no family and will need three to pass him over should he die.”

Father Dominic nodded slowly and rested his huge hands in his lap. They were speckled with deep cobalt blue from the document lying on the oak desk next to him.

“I am busy.” He turned back to his work. “The sisters would have told me of this in due time. Is there something else you would ask of me?”

The young monk looked at his feet nervously. “I am curious about your plan, father,” he mumbled. “Your plan to save us from the Dissolution, to save us from King Henry’s destructive designs for the monasteries.”

Father Dominic laughed, a huge rolling chuckle that seemed to shake the room.

“I cannot deflect a king from his will, and so my plan will not save us from the Dissolution. King Henry’s men will take this building just as they have taken so many others across the land; it is simply a matter of time. I can only do my best to prevent all our good work from being wasted.”

“Our good work,” repeated the monk. “Will we be able to stay here?”

Father Dominic’s face fell once more. “Our work to pass these poor lost souls over is the most important duty we perform. Has this slipped from your mind?” the big man said.

“No, it is just . . . How shall we live if the abbey is taken from us?” the young monk stammered.

“That is not my worry. My primary concern is to deal with how they shall die –” he gestured towards the small window and the huts outside “– and what happens after, not how you shall live. There are matters of greater importance than food and drink for two dozen monks. Now I have much to do, if you will excuse me.”

Father Dominic reached across his work and picked up a small brown notebook before dismissing the young monk with a wave of his plate-sized hands.

Disturbed by his encounter with Father Dominic, the monk walked out of the sleeping abbey and, instead of following the footpath back to the cloisters, he passed on through the garden gates into the orchard. The air there was sweet and heavy with the fermenting smell of windfall apples. Too many were busy with the sick to pick all of the fruit this year and they fell from the boughs to rest in the uncut grass and turn brown in the sun. The day had already rolled over into night, but still the air hummed with the lazy buzz of a thousand well-fed wasps.

A sharp, silver half-moon lit his way through the trees as he followed a faint trail in the grass, crushed by the passing of the fleeing sister. Dew-soaked grass bled into his robe, making it swipe cold across his legs as he walked. Continuing all the way to the rear wall of the orchard, he stopped at a spot where he knew the latest runaway must have climbed over. The wall was not tall here, little more than shoulder-high to the monk; it had been built to keep out sheep, not keep people in.

Sliding his feet into a gap in the lower stones, he lifted himself up enough to rest his folded arms in the scuffed and torn moss on the top of the wall. He could just make out the zigzag path in the distance that the fleeing girl, unsure of which direction to take, must have made. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms close to each other, lacing his fingers together, and prayed so hard for the runaway girl that the bones in his hands cracked in protest.

Chapter Two – The Boy with No Name

Central London – Now

He woke in the ambulance; not that he realised where he was, just the cold white light and the noise, and all around him the terrible din of the sirens.

“Why am I tied down?” he asked, or at least he tried to, but the words seemed to stumble and fail as they reached his lips.

“It’s OK,” a loud voice boomed above the noise. “You’re on your way to hospital. Don’t pull at your safety belt, kid. You just lie still.”

He tried to focus on the voice, but the colours and sounds smudged and blurred and a massive and crushing pain in his chest suddenly erased the world.

Opening his eyes filled his head with an image he did not understand. Lights were flashing by over his head one by one. He was being pushed down a corridor, and remembered something about a hospital. People were talking all around, a cacophony of noise that crashed in around him.

“What’s your name?” A voice was repeating the question over and over. “Can you hear me, son? What is your name? Can you tell me your name?”

“No,” he mumbled. “No name.”

There was no way he was going to tell these people his name. They had to take care of him – it was a hospital after all, he knew they had to take care of him – but there was no way he was going to tell them that. Telling people your name meant social services. Then it would all start over again. He slowly shook his head and closed his eyes.

“It’s OK,” she said. “We’ll take care of you, but we still have to know your name.”

“No,” he repeated. “No name.”

“It’s no good,” the woman said. “Admit him – we can’t wait for permissions, we don’t have time. Take him down.”

And again the darkness came . . .

When he woke, the room was full of people and voices tumbled over one another and he could not hear a distinct word. He was aware of something over his mouth and lifted his arm to pull it clear.

“He’s awake!” someone shouted. “Stand clear, give him some room. Thank God, he’s hanging on. Don’t pull at your mask, son; you still need it.”

This last comment was addressed to him and he could vaguely see that a face now hovered above his own.

“Can you hear me?” He nodded, or at least he thought he did.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” The blurred face smiled. “You’re in hospital. Don’t try to talk yet; you’ve been through a nasty time. You need your sleep, don’t fight it. You’re quite safe now.”

His eyes drifted open and closed and the sounds receded as the pull of sleep dragged him into darkness.

He knew that time was passing rapidly, slipping away from him, but had no idea how much. He opened his eyes to another ceiling, this time in darkness, and another empty room. He closed his eyes again and, when he found the strength to reopen them what felt like only seconds later, he was no longer alone.

“Can you see me?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” he mumbled back.

“Do you have any family?”

“No,” he said truthfully. “No family.”

“So there is absolutely no one to come for you?”

“No, no one’s gonna come.”

“How do you feel?”

He found lucid thought almost impossible. His breathing came ragged and hard in his chest and his body felt impossibly heavy.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “I want to leave.”

“I’m sorry, boy, but there is no way that you will be leaving here.” The nurse smiled coldly at him. “No way at all. Is there anything you need? A priest?”

He almost laughed, but coughed instead and it tore his body up with pain.

“No priest then.” The nurse did not call for help as he coughed and clutched at his chest. “So there is no one we can get for you at all? No social worker? No friends?”

He shook his head as the cough became a blinding white light of intense pain. His body convulsed and he became vaguely aware of an alarm going off. He could see the nurse standing at his bedside, watching him.

“Do not struggle,” she said. “It is far too late for that.”

The door burst open and the room suddenly filled with people all talking at once and throwing back the covers from him and dragging equipment to his bedside. It was the last thing he saw.

“He’s not going to make it; the damage to his heart is just too severe. That’s why they brought him here from casualty.”

“Why?”

“Well, he’s going to die, isn’t he? Nothing they can do for him over there and it’s upsetting for the whole hospital to have a kid lying around, waiting to die.”

“How old do you think he is?”

“About fourteen, I reckon, maybe less; he’s probably older than he looks, think he was living rough for some time.”

“Damn shame. Where on earth are his family?”

“No sign of them, and he wouldn’t tell them his name upstairs, must be a runaway. We’ve been calling him Adam for want of something better. He was found in Adam Street under the archways; paramedics said he was so filthy he must have been living rough for some time. Last few nights were just too cold for him; hypothermia combined with long-term malnutrition, irreversible organ damage. Then the coronary . . .”

The two hospice nurses fussed around the grey-faced, fair-haired boy who lay as still as death before them. His frail body barely made a lump in the crisp white sheets and his feet lay far short of the end of the bed. Machines sprouting tubes and wires decorated the bedside, trailing to the backs of his thin hands. The room’s silence was punctuated only by the beep of the heart monitor as it registered the failing beat and the regular suck and blow of the ventilator. The nurses whispered as they spoke, although neither was sure if the boy could hear them.

“I just can’t believe stuff like this can still happen in the twenty-first century,” the younger of the two whispered as she affectionately brushed his fair hair back from his narrow face. “He would have been so handsome, but he’ll never grow up. How can things like this happen?”

“When you’ve been here as long as I have, you’ll understand we’ve not come as far from the Dark Ages as we like to think,” the older one commented scathingly.

“At least he’s clean and warm now, even if he doesn’t last long,” the first said wistfully. “Did you see his eyes before he lost consciousness? Such a pale blue-grey, like ice, so beautiful but such terrible sadness in them . . .”

“Don’t get involved.” The older woman gripped her colleague by the arm and tried to turn her away from the boy. “You can’t go getting upset over every body that comes in.”

“I know.” She finally tore her gaze from the boy’s pallid face. “But it’s so difficult sometimes. There was something in his eyes; it was like he was older. I dunno, like he was . . .”

“Weary.”

“Yes, that’s it, like he was tired of living.” She sighed. “Shouldn’t have that look at his age. He looked older than his years.”

The senior nurse ushered her junior out of the room and once more the boy was left in peace. The staff had given him a side room, more to spare the emotions of others in the wards than to benefit the boy. This was the first time for a long time that he had a room of his own and he was too far gone into his coma to even notice; instead his thoughts drifted to all that had gone before. His memory ran through the violent foster home from which he had fled as soon as he had been able, to the bitter cold of the London streets where all he had to keep him alive were the handouts from strangers. It was a stranger who had found him that morning and he had a fleeting moment of recollection as she had called for an ambulance while her dog licked his blue-tinged face; then there was the noise and the pulling around . . .

It was quieter now, but he had heard brief snatches of conversation as they tried in vain to stabilise his heart after the coronary. For a while he felt he was already dead as he drifted in and out of consciousness while the doctors worked on him. He could recall a few faces from that hectic room, but soon had no strength to resist the coma. Several people had rushed him through into the first room, the one with all of the machines and the constant noise and shouting, but only two nurses had wheeled him very slowly into this silent room and so he knew it would be his last. He didn’t mind; it was warm in here and, though he only felt he had the tiniest grip on life, he felt safe for the first time in years.

“Sleep, young man; you need your rest now,” a nurse told him but, despite the warmth in her voice, cold had already begun to run in his veins.

He gave up trying to fight it and, feeling the overwhelming drag of sleep, he gave in and the beep that accompanied him gradually began to slow down . . .

Chapter Three – D’Scover

“I cannot send anyone until at least next week, possibly Thursday; that is my final word on the matter.”

The tall, thin man leaned across his desk and flipped the pages of a large desk diary lying in front of him. Loose black hair fell forward across his almost impossibly pale skin as he ran a lean finger down a list of diary entries. Using both hands, he pushed his hair back, frowned and adjusted his telephone earpiece as the voice on the other end of the line continued to speak.

“What do you mean?” he snapped. “Why did you not say this before? This puts a very different light on the matter. You know full well that activity of this nature is dealt with by the lower departments.” He slammed the diary closed. “You can call them yourself and arrange an agent; Section One does not deal with matters so trivial.”

He waited while the person on the other end responded.

“No!” he suddenly snapped. “I care not which minor royal is involved. As a courtesy, I will put the alert through to Section Three myself, but there my involvement ends. Now, if you will excuse me, I have far more important work to attend to.”

He disconnected the caller and tossed the earpiece on to the desk. Leaning back in his chair, he expelled a long, slow breath while rubbing his eyes wearily. Pulling out the drawer by his knee, he removed a small black cube, which he clicked into place in a niche at the far right of his laptop keyboard. The screen turned black as he reached out and pressed the middle finger of his right hand into the cube. It now turned deep purple and a map of the world appeared upon it. This was liberally decorated with red patches clustering tightly round all of the major cities.

He touched the map over England and a more detailed one filled the screen; this he tapped again and raised a complicated mesh of lines representing London. The red patches split into hundreds of smaller points of light; these he watched for a moment before touching the image again and raising a detailed map of Gerrard Street and London’s Chinatown. On this screen the dots were fewer, just four or five, and they moved slowly around in a gentle waltz of colour. He tapped the keyboard and a single dot became a vivid yellow. When this was touched, the screen changed and went blank, taking on the purple shade of a day-old bruise. A single yellow-coloured word blinked in the centre of the display – Searching.