Something Red Read Online Free PDF Page B

the conversation, and paid attention to the curious scenes that formed behind his eyelids, and slept.
    H OB AWOKE A FEW HOURS LATER , on a blanket beneath which was the bunching rustle of straw, by the scent of it mixed with herbs: tansy to keep the vermin away, lavender to sweeten the tansy. The blanket on which he lay and the other with which he was covered were of clean undyed wool. Dimly he remembered stumbling up with Jack Brown to the men’s dorter. Cots, frames of wood with leather straps webbed across and pallets of straw atop the straps, had stretched in a double row away down a long stone-walled room. The rushlight Jack had held had showed windows here and there, cut in the rock and closed with ironbound wooden shutters. Hob had sat on a cot and had let himself fall sideways. Jack Brown had pulled his straw-filled shoes off and lifted his feet into the bed, helped him out of the rest of his garments, and spread the blanket over him, the last thing Hob remembered.
    Now he lay and looked into darkness, hearing, below the snores and grunts of his unseen roommates, a steadily growing discordant rumble outside the shuttered window. He swung his bare feet onto the icy wooden floor, and felt his way to the stone wall, and thence to the wood and iron of the shutter. He fumbled the peg from the loop, letting it hang on its thong. He pushed the big shutter open, to find himself on the second floor of the monastery, looking down at a torchlit scene in the bailey, a scant twelve feet below.
    It had snowed again while he slept, and there was a fresh carpet of white. The torches held by several monks cast a ragged circle of yellow light that sparkled in the drifts. In the center was a rough litter, on which lay a scarlet ruin in tattered robes. It looked like a deer that had been inexpertly butchered. Molly squatted by one side of the litter, her skirts spreading on the snow, while Brother Abbot hovered anxiously beside her. On the other side Father Thomas knelt in the snow, administering the last rites to the broken corpse.
    Fragments of speech drifted up to Hob as he hung on the windowsill, appalled and fascinated.
    “. . . blood be frozen on him, sithee . . . ”
    “. . . found him i’ valley, past t’ ford . . . ”
    “. . . what could, what could do . . . ”
    “. . . traveling alane . . . alane, ye canna . . . ”
    The warrior monks did not easily lose their composure, nor did they now, but even Hob could hear the strong undertone of shock and disbelief in their gruff professional comments.
    “. . . wolves, or . . . a bear come out of winter sleep?”
    “. . . gutted like a . . . ”
    “But it were Brother Athanasius! And he fully armed!”
    “. . . been eaten at, the while he was fresh! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
    “Wolves?”
    “Right hand is gone, sithee, and his eyes—”
    “But it was Brother Athanasius!” Brother Abbot burst out. “Surely not wolves, surely not: Samson and Goliath together could not have stood against him. What could kill Brother Athanasius? ”
    Molly looked up from where she squatted, her forearms across her powerful thighs. “It was a piece of this robe that we found, and it lying by the trail.” She bent her gaze again to the horrid thing on the litter. “There’s a black shadowy art that’s in this.” Then, lower, “I can taste it.” Everyone crossed himself at this, and Brother Abbot turned away, his hand over his eyes, but Father Thomas paused in his office to regard Molly thoughtfully.
    Hob became aware of the spill of freezing air coming through the unglazed window. He felt his way back to his cot and returned with a blanket wrapped like a cloak about his shoulders. He noticed now, beyond the clump of murmuring monks, a closed traveling wagon, wide and long; it stood with chocked wheels against a blank stretch of monastery wall, just beside the doorway of the buttery. The wagon was paneled in rich auburn woods, glinting darkly