Death and the Lady by Judith Tarr Page A

of what I should have thought of all along if I’d been as good a monk
as I liked to think I was.”
    “Good enough, Morwin. Good enough.”
    “I could have been much better. I could have refused to let
them make me Abbot. You did.”
    “You know why.”
    “Foolishness. You could have been a Cardinal if you’d cared
to try.”
    “How could I have? You know what I am.”
    “I know what you think you are. You’ve had the story of your
advent drummed into your head so often, you’ve come to believe it.”
    “It’s the truth. How it was the winter solstice, and a very
storm out of Hell. And in the middle of it, at midnight indeed, a novice,
keeping vigil in the chapel, heard a baby’s cry. He had the courage to go out,
even into that storm, which should have out-howled anything living, and he
found a prodigy. A babe of about a season’s growth, lying naked in the snow.
And yet he was not cold; even as the novice opened the postern, what had been
warming him took flight. Three white owls. Our brave lad took a long look, snatched
up the child, and bolted for the chapel. When holy water seemed to make no
impression, except what one would expect from a baby plunged headlong into an ice-cold
bath, he baptized his discovery, named him Alf—Alfred for the Church’s sake—and
proceeded to make a monk of him. But the novice always swore that the brat had
come out of the hollow hills.”
    “Had he?”
    “I don’t know. I seem to remember, faint and far, like
another’s memory: fire and shouting, and a girl running with a baby in her
arms. Then the girl, cold and dead, and a storm, and three white owls. No one
ever found her.” Brother Alfred breathed deep. “Maybe that’s only a dream, and
someone actually exposed me as a changeling. What better place for one? Here on
Ynys Witrin, with all its legends and its old magic.”
    “Or else,” said Morwin, “the Fair Folk have turned
Christian. Though I’ve never heard that any of them could bear either holy
water or cold iron.”
    “This one can.” Brother Alfred flexed his long fingers and
folded them tightly in his lap. “But to take a high place in the Church or in
the world...no. Anywhere but here, I would have gone to the stake long ago.
Even here, not all the Brothers are sure that I’m not some sort of superior
devil.”
    Morwin bristled. “Who dares to think that?”
    “None so bold that he voices his doubts, or even thinks
them, often.”
    “He had better not!”
    Alf smiled and shook his head. “You were always too fierce
in my defense.”
    “And a good thing too. I’ve pulled you out of many a broil,
from the first time I saw the other novices make a butt of you.”
    “So much trouble for a few harmless words.”
    “Harmless! It was getting down to sticks and stones when I
came by.”
    “They were only trying to frighten me,” Alf said. “But
that’s years past. We must truly be old if we can care so much for what
happened so long ago.”
    “Don’t be so kind. It’s me, and you know it. I’ve always
been one to bear a grudge—the worse for my soul.” Morwin rose and stood with
his hands clasped behind his back. “Alf. Someday sooner or later, I’m going to
face my Maker. And when I do that, I want to be sure I’ve left St. Ruan’s in
good hands.” Alf would have spoken, but he shook his head. “I know, Alf. You’ve
refused every office anyone has tried to give you and turned o down the abbacy
three times. The more fool you; each time, the second choice has been far
inferior. I don’t want that to happen again.”
    “Morwin. You know it must.”
    “Why?” Brother Alfred stood, paler even than usual, and
spread his arms. “Look at me!”
    Morwin’s jaw set. “I’m looking,” he said grimly. "I’ve
looked nearly every day for sixty years.”
    “What do you see?”
    “The one man I’d trust to take the abbacy and to keep it as
it should be kept.”
    “Man, Morwin? Do you think I am a man? Come. You alone can
see me as I