“There is another I requested be brought to me many days ago. He has not yet arrived?”
“Not yet, Your Grace.”
“I hope he can be with us by Compline.” She spoke mildly, even hopefully, but Alain now recognized the undercurrent that eddied around her. For all that her aspect was kind and her voice gentle, she did not allow her will to be disobeyed. Clerics scurried away; others took their place, and as a united party they processed out so the biscop could lead the service of Vespers, the evensong.
Cleric Willibrod, left in charge, allowed Alain to kneel and pray as Vespers was sung in another part of the camp. During the final psalm, two soldiers appeared at the open tent entrance. With them, as if he were under arrest, came Frater Agius. His brown robes looked travel-stained and rumpled, and he was limping. Alain was so surprised he jumped to his feet in mid-phrase.
Agius shook free of the guards. He knelt at once to finish the last lines of the psalm, and Alain, shamed by the frater’s piety, copied him.
“I thought you had stayed behind at Lavas town,” whispered Alain after the last Alleluia was sung. “I thought you did not intend to ride with Count Lavastine.”
“I did not.” Agius rose, glared at the guards, and limped over to wash his face out of the same fine brass basin used by the biscop. Alain was both astounded and entranced by this show of worldly vanity and arrogance on the part of Agius. The frater wiped his face and hands dry with the same soft white linen the biscop had used. “It is not my part in life to involve myself with the worldly disputes that tempt those who have been seduced by the glamour of earthly power and pleasures.”
“Then why are you here?” Alain demanded.
“I was summoned against my will.”
Agius promptly sat down in the cushioned chair which even an ignorant lad like Alain, unaccustomed to the ways of the nobility, could see was reserved for the biscop. This act of flagrant defiance set Alain shaking. The hounds, catching his mood, stirred restlessly, thumping their tails on the ground and lifting their heads to watch intently.
“I beg your pardon, Brother,” said Willibrod nervously. He began picking at the scabs on his skin. “That is Biscop Antonia’s chair. It is not fitting for a lowly brother to sit—”
Agius glared the poor cleric into silence.
Through the entryway, Alain saw torches flickering. Biscop Antonia had returned.