Sorrow Without End by Priscilla Royal

who claimed the disease was a blessing, one that brought the victim closer to Heaven, were correct. Somehow that seemed the kinder conclusion.
    Some battle-mutilated common soldiers were waiting to be seen: one missing his nose, another with features melted by fire, a third without eyes and one hand missing. Would these die of starvation in the coming winter, their families too poor to feed them, Thomas asked himself? By all rights he should offer faith’s solace and kneel with them, repeating the required litany, but Thomas wondered if he would ever have words enough to comfort them. He did know he would never have sufficient tears to soothe their wounds.
    Thomas shook these thoughts from his head and looked again without success for Sister Anne in the throng. Close by Sister Christina and the courtiers, he saw a familiar lay brother standing with two men dressed in secular garb. Brother Beorn was talking to the elder of the two, but the younger captured Thomas’ particular notice.
    This man stood with arms folded, head bowed. He was dressed in a dark cloak, his hood tossed back despite the weather, and his hair blanched almost white. From others he had seen, Thomas recognized that as a familiar mark of Outremer’s blinding sun, yet the man did not bear the mark of a crusader.
    Suddenly the man looked directly at Thomas, his eyes slowly taking him in from shoe to cowl. The monk felt his face turn hot, as if a woman had come upon him while he was naked. Then the man turned aside and stared toward the hospital entrance.
    Thomas relaxed and studied the man’s face. He would have been most handsome once, but the wide purple scar that ran diagonally across his nose from forehead to jaw made a mockery of the beauty God had given him. How could the man have survived a blow that had almost cut his head in two, Thomas wondered?
    The monk looked back at the older companion. Although he was still talking with Brother Beorn, the man glanced around the courtyard as if he were seeking an enemy hidden in the crowd. Once his look rested on Sister Christina where it lingered for a few seconds before restlessly moving on. The elder’s face was several shades darker than that of his companion, with lines cut deeply into his forehead and around his mouth. He was also shorter, and a scattering of gray in his black hair suggested he was older than his lean, muscular body would suggest. As he turned toward Thomas, the monk noticed that one eye socket was black and quite empty.
    Unusual wounds for men who were neither dressed as soldiers nor carried the sign of crusaders, he thought. Surely they had been in Outremer. Rare was the Englishman with such a tan or a youth with such white hair unless both had been exposed to that barbaric sun. It was strange that they did not wear the cross. Even those returning with much reason for grief displayed their red badge with pride.
    As he waited for Brother Beorn to finish with the men, Thomas continued to study the pair. The one bore a vague similarity to the other, he decided. They might differ in hair color and build, but there was a certain likeness of feature. Perhaps they were brothers born to different mothers? After all, Thomas, especially with his distinctive hair, little resembled his siblings. Not only had Thomas’ own father had more than one wife, he had casually coupled with a servant woman, the one who gave birth to Thomas. One of these two might have a similar parentage.
    Whatever the truth there, their bearing proclaimed them men of some status, Thomas concluded. As one raised somewhere between the world of servants and that of the nobility, he recognized the stance. Men of rank inevitably stood firmly on the earth as if it were made of stone. Those of lesser birth shifted cautiously, their ground made of a more unstable substance perhaps.
    The older man now turned away from Brother Beorn and touched the young man’s arm with a poignant tenderness. When the latter turned unblinking eyes