Purple Monster

The dream was upon her and she was deep within its womb. There was a strange churping noise and a thrumming like a thousand wagons going past. Fluid streamed past her and the world was perfect. Warm, still and full of life around her, her brothers and sisters, she could see them she could hear them she could feel them. The worlds shattered and the cold hit them full of foul stench. Her lungs suddered and she wailed.

Time shifted, fire, blood and pain, always or cold, rotting pain with dank smell and festering hunger – it often ended in firey pain. Fever, with dreams, fever with sweat, fever, always. Her mind closed down around her swollowing her whole.

She awoke in Matthews arms, she snuggeled down into his spicey warmth. The morning bell began to toll, but her and Matthew were still very cold even with each other and the leather screens, there was ice on the inside of the inner screen. It was probably a good job that they had been woken up – asleep for much more time in the fridged tempurature and they could have succumbed to hypothermia. Matthew shrugged on his clothing scowling, she could sense his tension and steeled herself for the hate, for the rejection.

‘It shouldn’t be this cold in here,’ he said suddenly, ‘even with the snow. He checked the leather shieling again and frowned. ‘The outside ones been slashed!’

‘What! she cried jumping up and clambering to get her own cloths on. She was less clumsy in the cold than Matthew but she could handle extreme temperatures better than other people. The screen was beyound repair, ‘this has to have happened whilst we were sleeping’ she said shuddering. He nodded looking grave.

‘We’re going to have to tell the Abbot.’ he said – her blood ran cold at that.

It was starting to look like staying here really was getting dangerous. She nodded, she couldn’t survived outside on her own with the weather being the way it was and she was loathed to leave Matthew, she’d even become attatched to Henry and Luke in away she knew to be a bond. Her fate was wound up with theirs and there was nothing she could do about it. For now she would have to just go with the flow.

With the food scraps hidden in the habbits, in ways that were not going to be comftable doing the pray sessions! She found it almost impossible to remain still during the long boring chants. From what she could see from her ‘naughty’ glances around Henry was having the same sort of problem and even Matthew and Luke were having issues. The adjouning room had been attacked to but a quick word with the other novices had shown them that this was not a general make the novices lives a misery but was most definatly a directed attack. What they couls and indeed should do about this she did not know. Even if they told the Abbot he’d be stumped as to what support he could offer them.

On the other hand it would look like and indeed was probably an attempt on the Bastard Princes’s by the Catholics. There was a chance that there were provisos in place to deal with this sort of situation. Of course if it was Them after her again then it didn’t really matter what the precuations were she was going to be in the shit.

They sat through the breakfast bearly tasting it and chewing on reflex she was pleased with the warm water that they were allowed with it to warm them up. There were even rumours that mulled wine would be making an appearance that afterenoon with the last meal ofg the day.

Luke showed them how to get down to the dog pounds, the kennels stank, and the dogs wagged their tails and growled in a friendly sort of way as they entered the stone building, The scraps where eagily devoured and the four of them stood there looking forlornly at the dogs hoping that they hadn’t just sentences the creatures to an early grave. She had sluaghtered dogs to warm her hands in the ice and she still hated it. She looked at the boys with her, they seemed so young and she was awear she looked about the same, they were a collection of ganglyness, pale ganglyness. You could just tell that they each had their own little quirks which if out side of a monestry could well have cuased them some problems.

Dejectedly they started back across the fresh snow to the monstery, their leather bound feet made cruching noises – not enough people had trodden on the snow to make it slippry with compaction but at the same time they were batterling their way through one of the thickest drifts of snow around. It had all swept up to the monestrys stone walls and gone no furthure.

The Abbot’s secratary angrially intercepted them before they could get into his chambers, they were cold wet and miserable, they had agreed not to say anything about the food (unless it did turn out to be posioned) instead they were just going to say that there things had been moved about. The missing shields and then the slashed spares were distubing. Their cells were one floor up so getting to the windows wasn’t easy though she knew full well she would have been able to do it easily.

The secratary a large man who tended to wear black and white and a rather large and though it wasn’t supposed be was also rather floppy, he’d been positioned abroad and had bearly come over to the ‘new’ religon. He tried to use his belly to force them back out of the anti-chamber but Matthew turned his burning intensity on the man. He was bueatiful and fevorent when he did so, she could swear he shone with his own engergy. A glow of something, and he was not leaving. ‘We have to see the Abbot it is essential your grace.’ he said perfunctionaly and boldly.

The large man seemed to wither slightly but still held his ground. ‘The Abbot is a busy man and does not have time to parly with novices who are shurking their chores!’ he spat.

Matthew glared, ‘we are not shurking there is a serious matter we need to speak to him about!’

‘Do you not think he’s having enough trouble as it is, do you realise how fragile our existance is here?’ his belly wobbled as he jiggled in rage.

She stealed herself for a boring triade on religon and existance but it turned out he was being ementantly practical, ‘the King is closing the monastic schools even threatening Cambridge and you want to see him over a problem of what room mantaince? Becuase you have been careless with what has been given you!’ She could see his point.

‘But its not that – we have been being careful but someone else went into our rooms! Someone is trying to make the princes’s sick!’ Matthew realised he’s made some sort of error. The Priest rose up and glared at them all.

‘I see no princes’s here, I see no devil spawn of the Bolyne witches and others like her – if I did I would be building a pyre – The King has one child and that is Mary, god annonted. What his current marrage brings will be naturally god anonted to though the Queen herself is a heritic the child is ordanded – if it lives.’ The guy was actually foaming at the moutn. They all stared at one another – he was obviously very much still of the old religon and what their next move should be they weren’t sure. The royal status of Henry and she had remind herself supposedly of her ment that they should have had the Abbots instant attention but they needed to get past this lump of lard.

She looked at Henry and he was grinning at her she grinned back Matthew was also starting to fizz, the tension between him and the secratary was growing. They both indicated their intent by slightly inclining their heads and waggling their eyebrows – if the secratary had been a trained worrior he’d have seen the danger coming before they’d even grinned at one another.

The both bolted either side of him just as Matthew started shouting – then it turned out that Luke had been slowely queitly and effiecently sidling along to the door anyway and as the Secratary roared and tried to catch her she ducked and he flobbled around with reactions the speed of a pesant cart laddened for market. Henry was around the other side and already through the door that Luke had opened, she hurtled through the room after him adn they skidded to a halt only becuase they had cannoned into the Abbot.

His white wire eyebrows were raised and he looked very startled. ‘What is going on here?’ he asked, in a voice slightly elevated to be heared over the full blown fight that appeared to have broken out between Matthew and the SEcretary. They all started talking at once. The babble was of course incomprehensible to the Abbot who disentangled himself from them and strode to the door. The Secretary entered with Matthew in a headlock, Matthews eyes were flaring with anger and pain as he was dragged mutely into the room, he was going slightly red.

‘Robbert let the boy go for goodness sake,’ The Abbot said.

MAtthew slupped to the floor spluttering, she rushed over too him, the Abbots gaze was disaproving at her ministrations, but Matthew seemed to have really suffered from the secretaries wrath.

‘Please your Grace someone is after the Princes’s’ Luke said quietly. The Abbots penetrating eyes bore into him. The Secretary begain his rant again about there being no Princes’s the Abott held up his hand to silance the fat lump.

‘Princes’s or not they are part of the gentry and Protistant though I belive you had a Catholic education,’ he said looking at her. She nodded, after all that was her cover story – she had been educated in France and in the orthodox way. ‘They are favourites of the King, he may wish them as advisors or there may be some familial tie we know nothing of and even if they weren’t they are within our care Robbert.’ The Abbot stifferend and looked as stone, the blob of a secraty grunted and then ground his teeth in an effort not to say anything.

He nodded gruddingly and then the Abbott dismissed him, the pit of her stomache went cold as she watched the man leave the room, they had humiliated him, they would pay for it later in some way. Matthew spat out some blood on the floor.

He was shaking with pent up frustration and his eyes were fever bright, ‘You Grace’ he said thickly through swollen lips. ‘Our wooms were searhed n they toog the sweens, den dey slahed the dare deem.’ the swelling was getting worse, he spat more blood.

The Abbot looked to Luke for a translation. He pursed his lips and then nodded when they said they’d checked with the other novices about pranks and the like. If it had been thieft they wouldn’t have come back to slash the replacement screens.

‘Now it may well still be a joke,’ he told them severlly, ‘But we can not take that risk, there have been several plots uncovered that you boys never knew about – intercepted at the coast.’ Henry gasped, and the Abbot nodded gravely and closed his eyes as if suddenly old.

‘I think perhapse we should start by moving you to another set of rooms, furthur up and harder to get too, now they must not be too isolated otherwise we are just trapping you futhure and for a while it might be prodent if you take it in turns to sleep. I will have to concider rooms very carefully so I suggest you go and pack up your stuff now.’ They all thanked him and left, Matthew a little shakily.

Posted: Thursday, November 26th, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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