Mist Over the Water by Alys Clare Page B

has just rowed across half the fens and back again is surely not afraid of a bunch of monks!’
    He grinned. ‘It’s not the same,’ he said vaguely.
    No, I was sure it wasn’t. I dug him playfully in the ribs. ‘What’s the matter, afraid they’ll make you stay in?’
    I had been joking, but from the sudden heat in his face I realized I’d hit the bull. He muttered something, his face still red, and I reached for his hand. ‘They won’t.’ I stated it flatly. ‘If they do, I’ll come and get you.’
    His smile widened. ‘Promise?’
    ‘Promise.’
    He gave a deep sigh. ‘Very well. I’ll go in as soon as they open the gates in the morning.’

EIGHT
    W
e made Sibert as unmemorable as we could next morning. I fashioned a cap for him out of the woven scarf he was wearing round his neck, pulling it forwards to conceal his forehead and brows. His tunic was muddy from his trip across the fens, and I resisted the urge to brush it clean; cleanliness stood out more than dirt among a hard-working population, and it would be better if nobody remembered any details about the man who had come looking for the pale-haired monk. Just in case.
    I didn’t let myself think too much about just in case .
    As we ate our breakfast we concocted a story: Sibert would say his name was Faol and he worked with his father, who was a rat catcher, and did the monks have any areas of the abbey that were infested? If they said no, then Sibert was to pretend to have seen ominous signs, upon which we hoped the monks would be alarmed into inviting him to have a good look round. Once inside, it ought to be easy. This was, after all, an abbey that at present was in the throes of a major redevelopment, with a huge, new cathedral rising in place of the little Saxon church. Workmen were going in and out all day, no doubt swarming all over the building site. Indeed, our first idea had been to have Sibert pretend to be one of them. We had, however, realized that this disguise would not give him the excuse to venture into the abbey’s private areas; hence the rat-catching plan.
    I saw him off with a hug and an encouraging word. I watched him as he hurried off up the alley. Then I went back inside and started to pray.
    The pale-haired boy lay on his hard bed. He knew he could not stay alone there for long. One of the worst things about this new life into which he had been so abruptly thrust was the almost total lack of privacy. Not that he’d ever had much of that in his humble village home, but what he had always sought – and quite frequently managed to achieve – was solitude. Now every instant of the day and the night was spent in the close company of other people. Those people were monks, moreover, and to the last man senior to him in the religious life, which meant they were entitled to tell him what to do and make sure he did it. He had never in his life felt so many pairs of eyes studying his every move, and it unnerved him so badly that he barely knew himself.
    As if that were not bad enough, he was terrified.
    There was something quite dreadful within the abbey. He knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He had seen it. It had seen him , or it would have done if it had— No . He forced himself to arrest the thought. Wasn’t it enough that the fearful spectre haunted his brief snatches of uneasy sleep, without imagining it in his waking hours?
    They called him Brother Ailred, but that was not his name. He was not sure that he ought to be called brother, for he was quite certain he had not taken any vows in the short time he’d been at Ely. But to whom could he protest? The other monks barely let him speak, and he was quite sure that if he tried nobody would listen.
    As far as the pale-haired youth was concerned, his name was Gewis. He was fifteen years old, and he had been born and bred in a small village called Fulbourn, on the edge of the fens some five miles to the south-east of Cambridge. His home had been out to the south of the