It was the night before preaching day. Knox and I were standing near the opening of Saint Korbin's, illuminated by torches hung on the walls above us on either side. The walls were built higher now than it was before, twice as thick, too. I felt as empty as our granges, the grains short and scarce. A thick mist blanketed the night, obscuring even our vision. Then, we heard it; the unmistakable clopping of a horse steadily approaching the monastery.

The borders have been opened temporarily, Knox said, and he had contacted a trader from a faraway town for business. I made sure that my face was covered, resisting the urge to shrug off Knox’s cold hands hovering nearby as he cast his illusion over me.

“Hail, traveler,” Knox said, as a man with a feathered cap emerged from the mist. He was dressed like a villager but with a dyed-blue scarf on his neck and wearing a thick leather jacket over his old jerkin.

“Good evening, Brother,” he said, alighting his chestnut-brown horse. It was the common horse used for travel, or for galloping in the fields of a lesser noble. Knox nudged me to get the reigns. The man looked at me kindly and then at Knox. “It is all right, brother. I can send Klep here to the stables myself.” He was already looking around, peering through the mist.

“No, let the novice do it. Time is of the essence, trader.” Knox made a move to catch the reigns himself.

It was then that the horse whinnied away from Knox’s touch. “Hush, Klep. Hush.” The trader stroked the horse’s mane and gave him an apple from his pocket to quiet him, but Klep shook, beating the ground with his hooves. He was trying to turn away, tired legs retreating. His face was strong enough to push me back. That is when he stopped. Klep's eyes were black and round and wide. I saw myself reflected in his fear. When I reached for him, Klep stilled. I could feel his heartbeat loudly as my hands patted his neck. I placed my hands on his face and to my surprise, he nuzzled close to my chest.

I’ve never seen a horse up close. Only once, when we were on the path to Trushire. “You are magnificent, Klep,” I said.

The man patted Klep's back, smoothing him down. “A fine breed enough, courtesy of our lord Robert. Though I take it you have not seen finer breeds in your time here, eh, little monk?”

I shook my head and proceeded to hide under my cowl. I was not used to being treated as if I were a normal person by a villager. Instantly, Knox’s words hit me. What if you did not need to hide anymore?

I took Klep to the stables and tied his reigns to a post. He was watchful of the mist, looking through to see his rider walking with Knox back to the church. I took the apple that fell from the ground, wiped away the dirt and offered it to Klep. He sniffed and bit into it slowly. I grabbed a bucket and filled his trough with clean water. Knox had told me how to do it, not knowing or caring that Wilbur had already instructed me how. I gave him some fresh oats that the trader handed, and when Klep was settled in, I looked at the stables itself. I touched the beams and looked at the overall design. Ealhstan had never built a stable before. Knox must have given him the blueprints, and he must have cut trees nearby. I wondered if we were near a forest. I closed my eyes and imagined breathing in the smell of bark and loose earth. Klep was beating his hooves impatiently, and I sensed a presence nearby.

“Brother Swithin? Do not bully the horse. You’ve had your fun.”

Just outside the stable, Swithin appeared out of the misty shadows. Klep immediately became agitated and stomped his feet. I blocked his view of Swithin as he chuckled. His appearance somehow looked altered, much like how Woodrow was after the harvest festival. He was behaving oddly, too. Relaxed and agitated at the same time, wearing the same drunk expression that Woodrow had when he crept up to the couple in the garden.

“I was simply guiding them and protecting them from outlaws,” he said.

“What did you do to the outlaws?”

He shrugged. “Whatever Knox told me was necessary. I am so awake, little Ryne. The forest is silent but my heart thrums with a new voice. Here, let me show you.”

It almost looked as if he was dancing with himself as he ran about like a dog chasing its own tail. He spun around, then leaped towards the top of the wall. Swithin turned around and flashed a smile, teeth glistening sharp as Klep protested again behind me. He flipped like a coin outside the monastery. Knox gave me no instruction to follow or return to the tower, so I stayed with Klep. Frightened as he was of everything, he was better company than Knox and his books. I also hoped to glimpse Wilbur and Woodrow as I waited for Knox and the trader, but they were kept far back inside the monastery, still. It seems that we were all trapped in each of our sectors. Except for Swithin, the lucky prick.

___

There was another traveler, then another. I took care of their horses, each meeting taking longer than the last. Each time they came, I waited in the stables. I didn’t mind. Swithin was still behaving oddly, and I still preferred the company of horses to the silence of the towers and those neverending books. There was a sickening sensation beginning to rise in my mouth whenever my eyes landed on the strange texts. The traders thanked me as I handed them back their horses. Klep’s rider even gave me a penny, to which I gave Knox.

“You can keep it if you wish. It might prove useful.” I shrugged and pocketed it.

After the traders, there came a merchant, feathered cap vibrant and leather jerkin fine and polished. He had pouches on his satchels and he jingled with loose coins. His belly was big, and it surprised me that there were people who grew to his size with more than enough meals to eat.

His horse was strong, decorated with a simple cloth and fluttery things that hung from its ears. But just like the rest, he startled when Brother Swithin came near. This night, Swithin looked like his usual self. He looked behind him, checking that Knox and the merchant were in the middle of business, then handed me a scratch of paper. I almost made a joyful noise when I saw WIlbur’s neat handwriting as I unfurled it:

“We are well. Knox forces us to give all the good grains and best quality produce to the traders. He intends to make Saint Korbin known as a stable monastery for business. We miss you. Keep safe. Burn this letter.”

I held it to the flame and watched it turn into ash. I stomped the evidence of correspondence away just as Knox and the merchant came back. Swithin had disappeared as I read the letter but was now helping to load the produce onto the horse. The merchant flipped a coin at me. I caught it squarely on my palm. I was getting good at catching coins. I looked at the covered jugs smelling sweetly of honeyed milk and the clinking bottles of what I knew were Wilbur’s finest medicines. I glared at Knox.

___

Knox paused our lectures. He began to scribble each night on his desk as I continued to read. It was pointless; despite his assurance that I would remember this, the words and their stories were collecting in a senseless pool in my mind.

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I’m just glad that Knox was preoccupied with his nightly correspondences. He was writing to his main connections, no doubt, and building the path he wanted for himself. I looked at the chains lying about and I remembered Woodrow’s words of going into towns. I had since learned the truth; we were prisoners. He used Swithin as his messenger. Some nights, it was his usual self, some nights, he was wilder, eyes wider and snarling excitedly.

Swithin had been discreetly giving me messages from Wilbur, detailing of the events of Saint Korbin monastery.

More than half of the villagers’ crops are dying, and though Wilbur didn’t include it in his letters, I’d guess that the same was happening to the villagers themselves. A quarter of their healthy yield was being given to the monastery as tribute, just for show. Knox had a point, after all. They hated us, but they did not suspect. Their hatred was the common hatred towards all the nobles who were still healthy and living well inside strong, warm homes. The food that was grown here in the granges, nurtured by Wilbur’s fertilizers, was supposed to feed the villagers here. Instead, it was sent off to the traders and their lord.

The villagers of Saint Korbin had also given up on life; they’d rather let the sickness swallow them than live in a gloomy, hostile, hungry world. It made Knox happy to hear that; it meant more medicines for the other villages or townspeople ruled over by a lord. Those that can afford them, anyway. My blood boiled. Wilbur’s medicines aren’t for sale. But I regained my composure when he said that they traded it for resources like ores and fish for the few remaining people who chose life. The traders did not just take, after all.

I realized why I was tucked in the corner of the nave, near the entrance, and only summoned when it was during the middle of Knox’s sermon. It was due to the simple reason that I could not see their faces. So that I wouldn’t know who died and who remained. What helped his plan was that the villagers I saw on the pews had actually doubled. These came from the banished villagers of other lords; those who were sick and those who could not pay rent or taxes.

Knox put them to use.

After the service, he ordered several of the newest additions to Saint Korbin monastery to earn their stay on top of their tributes. “Clean the pews,” he told them, not even looking them in their desperate eyes. “Scrub the floors, there are brushes and buckets for you. Make sure everything is spotless. The children should never be noisy and must work in the fields, else, they should keep to themselves.”

I helped them as much as I could before Knox forbade me. I wanted to help them during the day, but I was still locked inside. Reading and forgetting, chanting the prayer that Knox had me memorize, the words having no meaning to me.

___

There were more soldiers now at the entrance of the naves, their helmets on their sides, watching the pews, and watching Knox deliver his sermon.

“...and so, we must swear fealty to those who are better. Those who the Saints themselves have blessed with lands, with knowledge about plants and medicine. Were it not better to serve the clearest sign of the Saints and their miracles, who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked?”

After the sermon, the soldiers offered their swords to Knox. This was new to me. I was hiding in my spot in the corner of the nave and watched as Knox collected coins from them and put them in his pouches. He has been storing them in his office back at the altar. The first soldier that I met standing on the pulpit was now stationed there. When he was gone, I assumed another would stand in his place.

Then that very night, I heard the sounds of metal echoing through the empty monastery. After about a year of silence, it was a welcome disturbance. It was a steady rhythmic clang, of stone against metal.

“Brother Ealhstan is using his raw strength for another use,” Knox explained. “Since the monastery is finished and there are no more walls to build, we have decided to put him into repairing weapons with Woodrow’s aid. Our red-headed brother knows some basics of swordkeeping and weaponry, you know.”

I did not know. Woodrow never mentioned anything. The only “weapon” he carried was his short dagger which he only ever used for hitting barks of trees and cutting the skin off apples.

The next night, it was silent, and I missed the sounds. It was the only thing that made me happy, apart from Wilbur's nightly meals. Every sound was an assurance that might Ealhstan was still there, that I didn’t need to see him or hear him talk to know that he was still all right. And Woodrow was with him. I ached to hear them again.

The sound returned the next Saintsday. My heart leaped when I saw the soldiers again, with their old rusted weapons. Swithin carried their polished swords and I saw the handles were cleaned and the blades sharper, glinting in the candlelight. There was always a group of them, but the one who inspected the blades–their commander–was the only one who talked to Knox. The rest were looking around, frowning, holding their arms, and whispering amongst each other. They urged their commander to hurry.

I listened to it as if it were the sweetest music. The next Saintsday, though, it became slower and softer. The Saintsday after that, I was surprised that Knox walked me around Wilbur’s garth again, not too far from the light of the nave. He told me to inspect his gardens and found them healthy enough. This, too, was a sign that Wilbur was still working. Yet, when I touched the flowers, I sensed something was wrong; a yearning and of tedious boredom, like I was in my tower. Simply doing what was asked of me. There was a sharp noise from within the cloisters, but Knox called me back before I inspected them.

“Your brother has been getting weaker and thinner, refusing to feed.” Knox was counting the coins in his office, arranging copper and silver in his many pouches. “I let them see you from their offices, so they would feel motivated.”

Sure enough, after I retired to my lonely tower, there was that same sound again, clanging into the night.

___

One of the elders wanted his son to be learned somewhat. He had hoped that he could be taught how to illustrate the scripture books. Without warning, he pointed at me. I was startled by the attention.

His voice shook. “Teach him how to be a novice, just like our young brother there, please. We agreed to it. We would give you everything we have; our house, our clothes, our livestock, the small fortune we have.” he handed Knox an iron hammer passed down from his father.

The boy meanwhile knew the answer before Knox gave it. He was small and shy like me. He probably has no mother, no siblings left, and no future tending the fields. Our eyes met, and I knew he would hate me. But he just looked at me, absent of feeling, and then he tugged his father back to their huts, the elder’s shoulders shaking.

Knox would never grant anything that would give power to the villagers, so long as he was the sole responsible one running this monastery.

___

I had gotten used to Swithin’s shifting appearance, from being himself–or at least a docile version of himself–and the wilder image, with longer unkempt hair and bigger eyes.

Knox was drinking from a wine of dark red liquid near the fireplace, inside his small office behind the altar of the church. The odd wine he was drinking smelled sweetly enough, though something about it made me feel wrong. He saw me looking and smirked. “Stick to ale and soup for a while. You can taste wine when you get older,” he said mockingly.

Knox smacked his lips, turning the glass container against the fire. “I do not know if you remember with your mushy memories, but I heard the news that the once-children of Fairstep monastery abandoned their homes with some of the younger children because they do not recognize their parents anymore. As if they aren’t themselves.”

I remember. Was his questioning meant to hurt me tonight? He sipped on his strong wine, downing the whole bottle and shattering the glass in the fireplace. I didn’t know we could get drunk. Woodrow never showed any sign when he drank barrels of ale before. Nor did Ealhstan.

“Swithin and I make sure the peasants will never abandon this monastery. I’ve learned my lesson for being lenient. They will never escape their fate.” Then, for no apparent reason, he looked at me, swaying a little, his smile taunting. “Wilbur’s flowers are blooming again, isn’t that nice? His plants are being fed, after all. Plenty of fertilizers to go around.” Then he hicked and retired for the night, making sure Swithin carried me up the stairs to my cramped tower prison.

“Brother?” His chest had a dark mess to it when he released me. “Be careful with your hunting. You’re a mess.” I frowned. Swithin was never a messy hunter. On the contrary, he was always precise and made sure that the killing blow was final.

He covered his chest. Abruptly, he said. “I forgot to give you this three nights ago. Knox orders me. Run to other towns, he says.” He gave me a parchment, and I deflated when I saw how small it was. I guessed this was the final one. “Leave us,” it said in WIlbur's desperate handwriting. “Run, Ryne. Escape.”