Dunstan Read online

  In the new year, I felt reborn, as I always do. At one lunch, Abbot Simeon stood after prayers and held up a fine white scroll written by the king’s scribes, confirming him in his position of power over us. It seemed to give him some satisfaction to read it aloud. Brother Caspar congratulated him as he sat down, but Simeon just sniffed and applied himself to his food.

  I had been born in December, so I was fifteen. I was strong from forge work and the gardens, so even Godwin no longer seemed a match and walked warily around me as we passed. Godwin lined up to be shaved each morning with the monks, his jaw left pink and raw by Brother John’s razor. I had made my own and kept it sharp as regret, shaving with hot water and oil like the Romans.

  Far stranger was that Godwin had begun to apply himself to his studies, so that he seemed less the fool with every passing day. He might have taken a different path. Instead, he earned my enmity. We all make our choices: some for good and some that lead to destruction.

  The first months of that year brought storm after battering storm, tearing shutters and hinges out of stone in their ferocity. The boys huddled in rooms out of the cold, unless like me, they were made to fetch and carry, to repair broken tiles and leaking roofs. On the eve of Candlemas in February, I was called out to spend hours on a creaking ladder. Forty feet above the ground, I stood with my mouth stuffed full of nails I’d made myself, passing them up to the elderly Brother John above and trying not to catch a glimpse above his knee when the wind whipped his robe about.

  It was raining, in the sort of soft drizzle that chills to the bone. I had both hands on the ladder and stood with my shanks quivering in the cold and wet. Though it was still the morning, it seemed dark, the clouds were so thick overhead. I was so numb I could not feel my lips or the ends of my fingers.

  I heard a scream somewhere not too far off, muffled, but raw in its agony. I knew what it meant in the instant, some note in it. I felt the cold stab at me and I climbed down, though Brother John roared in confusion and anger above.

  On the ground, I could only turn on the spot, seeking, but not knowing where to run. I remember I spat the black iron nails into my hand and put them into a pocket. Nothing teaches value like making each one.

  When the sound came again, I was off, haring across the yard. The new tower loomed at me and I wiped rain and my hair away so I could make out the bundle swinging from the highest point.

  Wulfric turned slowly on a creaking rope, high above the ground. For a moment, I thought he had snapped his neck. He hung slack, his head covered in blood. He could not be dead! I felt a rush of warmth race from my crown to my feet as I stared up, blinking. He was entangled somehow. I had to get him down. I had to save him.

  A dozen yards away from me, Alice shrieked again. Like me, she stood staring up, her eyes wide and helpless. Encarius came running then, the man flinching at the look I turned on him. He drew to a shocked halt as he looked up, his mouth falling open. I saw Encarius bring out his horn-handled knife to cut the boy down. I grabbed his arm.

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘If you cut the weight free, you’ll hurt him worse.’

  Encarius looked up, shading his eyes from the rain. I saw him bite his lower lip in confusion and realised that he did not know how to get the boy down.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, holding my own knife up.

  He nodded, looking strangely at me.

  I’d seen the huge counterweight that had dragged Wulfric sixty feet into the air. It was three hundredweight of iron and the biggest we owned in those days. I understood Wulfric had been tied on, somehow, before the iron block had been nudged off the tower. Perhaps they’d expected him to dangle and call for help. Perhaps they hadn’t known the counterweight would strike his head as he passed, or that it would draw him right into the pulley, so that his arm was crushed. Or perhaps they’d known very well what they were doing.

  I raced up the inner steps of the tower, flight after flight, though I grew not weary. I flew, without slowing, until I stood on the highest point and saw my brother’s still form turning below. I pulled one of the ropes towards me and wrapped it around a buttress, then cut the counterweight free, so that a great snake of wet cordage went spiralling down.

  The rain picked up, diluting the blood on Wulfric’s face, though it still ran from a huge gash on his scalp. I could not look at him. It made me think of Christ on the cross, with water running from his wounds. I reached and strained, snatching at his robe until I was able to pull him into my arms. There was a moment when I almost fell to my death. Yet I held on.

  His arm had been drawn right through the pulley by the counterweight, with great strips of flesh torn and jammed and the bones shattered. I cut the ropes around it, but with my small knife, I could not begin to free him. Instead, I lifted him onto my shoulders, pulley and all, and carried him down.

  8

  When I staggered out into the rain with my burden, Alice wailed as if she were the one who had been wounded. I was oddly moved by it, for which I can only offer callow youth as my excuse. Even in my grief, my rage, my aching arms, I knew I made a fine, arresting figure, with my brother held out before me under the rain.

  Her mother had been summoned from the infirmary and it was Aphra who sent the girl running for bandages with a furious command. I saw Encarius take note of the exchange and sigh to himself. When men do violence to one another, there is almost always a woman at the heart of it. We are all fools, you know.

  Half the monks and boys had turned out by then, shivering and whispering as they stood there in the wet. I was panting like a bellows with the effort of bringing Wulfric down and I let them take him from me. I looked for some sign of hope from Encarius, but he was almost as pale as Wulfric. They lowered him to the ground and Encarius put his ear to my brother’s lips to listen for life. There was a great seam opened in Wulfric’s scalp, a line as deep as an axe wound. Encarius probed it with his long fingers and I heard his intake of breath as he felt bones move beneath his hand.

  ‘Fetch a saw, Dunstan,’ he said. I blinked at him in horror. ‘A saw! We’ll have to cut the pulley apart to free his arm. And a hammer and chisel. Go on!’

  I did not want to leave. I stood up slowly, staring at Wulfric’s white face and broken flesh, all smeared in blood and rain. I saw Alice had crept back to stand with her hands over her mouth, her eyes shadowed with grief. At her side, Godwin had appeared with a few of the other boys. Young James was there, I remember, standing close enough to Godwin for me to mark them together in my mind. Godwin looked up as my gaze drifted across him and I saw he was afraid. No doubt he feared I would point him out to the brothers and call down a vengeance on him.

  ‘What happened?’ Godwin asked. ‘Did he fall?’

  ‘I think he was testing one of the pulleys,’ I said, proud of the calm in my voice. Half the men there turned to hear me speak. ‘It looks like he was snagged in the rope and drawn up.’

  Alone on the tower, I had seen the loop that lay around Wulfric’s wrist, the knotted rope. I imagine Godwin had knocked him out and tied him on, intending my brother to be found dangling and humiliated when he woke and called for help. It might have been a fine jest.

  They chose the pulley and weight because I was known to love them, not because they knew them well. Perhaps they truly had no idea his arm would be drawn in and ruined. It did not matter to me what they had thought. It did not matter to me what they had intended.

  I felt a great cold descend upon me, a numb calm as if I had drunk hemlock. I would not have pointed a finger at Godwin, not for the promise of a kingdom at that moment. Justice is mine, saith the Lord. Yet the flesh is weak and we are all sinners. I shook my head in sorrow at Godwin and watched the tension drain out of him, replaced by a dawning delight he could not completely hide. Not from me, who looked for it.

  Encarius had been clenching and unclenching his fists, caught between respect for my grief, and anger that I had not jumped to obey him. All at once, his patience unravelled. He signalled the scow
ling Caspar and Brother John to lift Wulfric, pulley and ropes and all. They bore him away to the infirmary, and I went at last to my little forge for the tools to cut wood and iron out of Wulfric’s flesh.

  When I returned, Master Gregory had been shaken out of his bed, the craftsman’s white hair in disarray. He reached for the tools I had brought, but I waved him away when I came to the bedside. I knew his big, scarred hands were more skilful than my own, but it was my task. Encarius had no time for my dignity, of course.

  ‘Take the tools, Master Gregory, quickly! I’ll tighten the bind on his shoulder.’

  ‘Let the boy work on his brother,’ the older man replied. ‘If that’s what he wants. It doesn’t make much difference now.’

  He and Encarius seemed to share a moment of silent communication. I knew Wulfric’s death lay in that warning glance, that the two men thought it did not matter who cut him free. I clenched my jaw, refusing to accept it. I watched as Encarius heaved a belt tight around Wulfric’s upper arm. The flow of blood slowed almost to nothing. I took a deep breath and placed a saw blade on an oak spindle that could be cut through and drawn away from the rest. Gregory patted me on the shoulder and I almost gave up and let him do it. He seemed to understand and he nodded to me. I began. After a time, we passed the tools back and forth between us as I worked.

  Wulfric made no groan or whimper as I cut the pulley apart, though it tore cruelly at him. Encarius and Aphra held him steady, standing over the bed like angels of judgement. At least Alice had not been allowed in. I did not think I could have borne her gaze then. It asked too much of me.

  I did not look up until the pulley had been split into a dozen splinters and iron pieces, all dropped into a bucket by the bed – and me fair speckled with Wulfric’s blood. I had worked quickly and roughly, tugging at flesh that moved and snagged like cloth. It was an ugly task.

  When I was done at last, I could only stare at the mangled hand, torn in two, with a trench running right through the centre and the middle finger missing. The wheel of the pulley had smashed all the bones of his wrist. Sheer speed and weight had drawn his arm right through to the elbow before it jammed, a force so huge it had crushed bone and sinew and muscle in an instant.

  Aphra had wiped away the blood on Wulfric’s face – and stitched the deep seam on his forehead as well, making a fair hand of it. He still breathed, that was all that mattered. His skin was damp with perspiration and looked like the flesh of a candle rather than that of a man. I thought he would die then. I accepted it, for the first time, where before it had not been possible.

  ‘The arm will poison him if I leave it, Dunstan,’ Encarius said.

  He was looking to me almost for permission, but as he said the words, I knew he was right, that of course he was right. I’d held Wulfric’s broken bones in my own hands and felt the sharp pieces shift under the skin. Metal and wood had pierced him right through and the wounds would let in poisons from the air. There was but one remedy to save his life.

  ‘He won’t live,’ I said, softly. ‘Why cut more from him now?’

  To my dismay, Encarius rested his hand on my shoulder, apparently unaware of how uncomfortable I was at the touch.

  ‘Only God knows if his time has come, Dunstan. Yet he will not grow well again with a rotting arm. If I cut it away, he will have his head to heal – and one clean cut. Men have survived such things in the past. He has a chance. A small chance, I know.’

  I looked down at the pale figure of Wulfric, stripped but for a cloth across his groin. He looked like a corpse already, and yet I could not believe he would not open his eyes. I realised Encarius and Aphra were waiting on my answer. I was his older brother and the only one who could give permission.

  ‘Very well, father. I will assist you.’

  Encarius began to give orders. In a short time, the tiny infirmary was packed with as many monks and boys as could cram themselves in. An amputation was an interesting enough event to bring them all. Godwin was there, I noticed, his eyes huge as he looked around. Encarius had placed four lamps around a sturdy table, lifting Wulfric onto it so that he lay under good light. I sharpened knives on a whetstone with quick strokes, rubbing away the trace of oil with a cloth. Holy water was brought and sprinkled over the table and the boy on it. Hemlock juice was ready in a little bowl, but Wulfric’s wound had stolen all sensation of pain.

  The brazier was stoked and the irons to sear the wound were inspected and plunged back. Prayers were said against infection and disease and then the room fell silent, except for the breathing of monks and the flutter of lamps. Encarius made the first cut, and it was too much and I could not see for tears.

  I did not sleep that night. In the dawn, I went to see my brother’s body. I expected him to be cold, but he breathed yet. Wulfric looked wrong somehow, as he lay senseless, his hair unbound and spread over the cloth. His right arm had gone and his face was swollen. Alice dabbed at sweat on his cheek, but the room smelled more of sickness and urine and strong herbs. Encarius had his burners crackling, spilling out streamers of some smoke to ward off evil spirits and rot. The smell made my eyes prickle and I waved Alice away, not even looking at her. I heard her sobbing into her hand as she left. I blamed her, a little, though I could not have said exactly why.

  When I rested my hand on Wulfric’s cheek, I felt a deep and threatening heat that made my heart sink. The fever began that morning and built in him over the next days. He choked when Alice and I raised him up to drink soup, so that his eyes rolled back in his head and death hovered at his shoulder. Only a little went down to give him strength. The rest was spattered over his chest and over me, or left as specks in his lungs for him to cough and dribble out. Yet he endured. The heat grew in him until I expected to see the damp cloths steaming and made dry as they reached his skin. He moaned and kicked out wildly at times, but he did not wake.

  On the third day, I entered the room to find Encarius and Caspar standing over my brother. I strode faster at the sight of them, feeling that I had to defend Wulfric in his helplessness.

  ‘… not much longer, I think.’ I heard Encarius say before he turned and saw who approached.

  ‘Father Encarius, Father Caspar,’ I said, forcing myself to bow. ‘Is my brother failing, then?’

  Encarius had the grace to blush, so that it was Caspar who replied. There was still spite in him, though I think I was the only one who saw it.

  ‘His crown was broken in the accident, boy. It is a mortal wound, always.’

  ‘Caspar,’ Encarius interrupted in warning. He sighed.

  ‘Dunstan, there is a piece of bone just … here.’ He tapped the front of his forehead. ‘In your brother, it has been pressed in, driven beneath the rest in the impact. I cannot raise it back. If I could hammer in a nail, I could lift the piece, but that would kill him with the first blow. I’m sorry. It presses on him and he cannot survive it.’

  I turned away without another word and ran, my breath caught in my throat as I scrambled down the cloisters to my little forge, my mind afire. It was cold and my hands shook as I scratched iron and flint and nursed a spark to light the lamp.

  The cat came to rub its head on the back of my hand, purring as I blew on the spark and tinder I held, as if I did it for his pleasure. Slowly, I opened the toolbox I had fashioned in oak for myself. With the cat looking on, I revealed my chisels and my black pincers, my saws and my block plane. I laid them aside and brought out the wood borer I had made, with its thread based on the work of Archimedes and Archytas of Tarentum.

  My hands were shaking as I took a piece of scrap pine and turned the borer’s tip into it, until it bit and held. I saw the bowl of iron nails, under oil to stop them rusting. It was the work of moments to crush one in my vice, with pieces of pine to hold it steady. I took up the thinnest file I had and began to score the length of it in a single line, working back and forth to cut a screw. This would not raise water in a tube, like the one Archimedes had made, nor a mere piece of wood. This one would rais
e bone.

  It took me all night and the following day to make four grooved nails. Wulfric still lived, though the mood of those tending him had darkened. He was a fighter, which they did not understand, not really. They saw only a thin lad, senseless and one-armed. I knew he would not give way. He would not die until death came to tear his hand from the world.

  That evening, the infirmary was filled again with those who had heard we would attempt something never seen before. We lit the lamps and let the incense fill the air. I watched as Aphra cut the stitches she had made in his scalp. The blood had clotted dark and her hands shook as she took up my smallest tongs, cleaned in the fire and polished to a high sheen. She opened them in him, pushing back his scalp so that we saw his skull, with liquid seeping out of the cracks. Blood dribbled down and stained the pillow beneath.

  Encarius leaned over the wound, fascinated to see what his fingers had felt before. I could see the disc of bone, smaller than I had expected, sitting beneath the rest. I swallowed, suddenly afraid it was all for nothing.

  I took one of the carved nails and touched it to the bone, wincing as the thing shifted beneath my hand. Slowly, I began to turn the iron head, praying aloud as I did so. I do not think my faith, my hope, has ever been as strong as in that moment.

  The point bit into bone. I could feel the thread grow tight as I turned, slow and without pressure, just letting the thing bind its way into the piece. I was shaking as I turned it, knowing that I would kill Wulfric if I went too far.

  ‘How thick is the bone?’ I asked Encarius. He was watching everything, of course.

  ‘Not much more,’ he murmured. ‘Will one be enough?’

  ‘If I am gentle, there is nothing to lose with another,’ I said. We whispered as if we might wake him and find him indignant at those all around. I smiled at the thought.

  The second filed nail took an age to start. I turned and turned it, wary of applying any force at all that might press the bone further and blow my brother out like a candle. When it squeaked and bit, I breathed in relief. A drop of my sweat fell into the wound and I watched it glisten there, mingling with Wulfric’s blood.