Page 74 of The Road to Avalon
I pulled her inside, and Gildas shut the door behind us, just that act making me feel a lot safer.
The big, square space of the abbot’s office held only his substantial oak desk and a few ancient chairs. On the left-hand wall hung the same large plain cross I remembered, and an open document chest occupied the right. The shutters on the two small windows had been removed for the summer, and the morning sunshine danced over pens and papers where they lay scattered over the desk. Dust motes floated in the beams of light.
“Please. Sit.” Gildas removed some rolls of parchment from the two chairs on this side of the desk and pulled them out for us.
We sat, and he edged his way back behind the desk and took his place in the abbot’s ornate seat. He placed big, bony hands on the desktop in front of him. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
“We came to see Abbot Jerome,” I said.
Gildas’s freckled face fell. “I’m sorry to have to tell you he’s unwell. That’s why you find me here in his stead. He’s been in his bed this past week with a chill that’s gone to his chest. You know how bad summer colds can be for the elderly.”
The elderly. Of course. When I’d first come here and met Jerome, he’d probably been at least forty, so must be over sixty now– old for this time period. A sobering thought. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, my brain frantically trying to work out what to do. “Are you acting as his deputy?” Maybe Gildas could help us, or pass my request on to Jerome.
Gildas nodded, a satisfied smile on his face. “I’ve been working with him these past five years, and he’s come to depend on me. He knows any decisions I make will reflect those he would make himself. I believe he’s grooming me to become abbot myself one day.”
Gone was the rebellious, too clever boy bullied by his classmates, and in his stead had arrived a confident, competent young man with an air about him of calm intelligence tempered with a certain lightness of spirit he’d not had before. I liked the changes in him.
“I would be most impressed if you were to become abbot here,” I said. “I feel as though I’ve had a small hand in your success.”
Archfedd glanced from him to me in open curiosity.
He grinned, showing me his teeth again. “You have indeed. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be. Perhaps back in Alt Clut as a reluctant warrior, although my father’s long dead now, or even just trudging behind a plough in the fields below Din Cadan. I owe you a great debt.”
He’d played into my hands. “I’m here to call in that debt,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I have need of sanctuary for me and my daughter.”
His ginger eyebrows rose into his hairline, or they would have done if he’d had one, but his shaven tonsure was of the sort that started at his ears and encompassed the entire front of his head. “Sanctuary? Why? What from?”
I glanced at Archfedd, but she was watching him in silent fascination. She’d only ever met individual priests, and never an abbot before, not even a trainee one. “Do you hear news of Dumnonia here?”
The smile fell from Gildas’s face. “We do. It comes to us via the lake village. We only receive what they can tell us, but I do know what happened to your sons. Bad news travels fast. I’m sorry for your loss.”
I nodded. I’d had so little time to mourn my boys before being faced with Archfedd’s dilemma it felt as though they’d been forced from my mind. I’d have to think about that later. “Their deaths have left my husband without a male heir,” I said, steeling myself. “He’s chosen his sister’s son– Medraut. He’s nearly twenty and unmarried. Arthur has decided Medraut should marry our daughter, to make a grandson of ours king one day.”
Gildas, who himself came from a dynasty of kings, frowned in confusion. “Isn’t that a good thing?” His gaze returned to Archfedd. “She looks old enough to wed. I don’t see a problem there.”
I took Archfedd’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s not her marrying that she and I object to. It’s the choice of husband. You don’t know Medraut. If you did, you’d understand. He wouldn’t make her a good husband or Arthur a good heir.”
Realization dawned on his rawboned face. “I think I begin to see. You’ve brought her here for the sanctuary of the church, have you not? To escape a marriage you do not favor.”
I nodded.
He rubbed the gingery stubble on his chin. “Let me get this clear. You’ve taken a betrothed girl, a princess, away from her father and brought her here, to me… to us? To Abbot Jerome, hoping he… we… could help her?”
I nodded again.
Gildas sucked in his lips. “You’ve done a very dangerous thing.”
“I know.”
“Betrothed is as good as married in the eyes of the law.”
“I know.”
He sighed. “But you are right that I owe you much. However, I can’t make a decision on this by myself. It’s too big a thing. It could affect the whole abbey. I’ll need to speak to the Abbot on his sickbed.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “I understand this is urgent. If you will wait here, I’ll do that now.” He got to his feet, made a small bow, and left the room through the door that led into the living quarters of the monks.
Silence fell in the office. My heart thudded against my ribs. Would Jerome agree? And if he didn’t, what would I do? Climb the Tor and look for the portal? Perhaps. Probably. I’d have to.
