World Without End

Thomas stepped in front of the ru

Thomas crashed into a pillar, and there was a crack that sounded like his head hitting the stone. He slumped to the ground, out cold. The ru

Caris pushed past Merthin and knelt beside Thomas.

Several more men appeared, all hooded, some carrying torches. It seemed to Merthin that some emerged from the refectory and others came down the stairs from the dorm. At the same time he heard the sound of women screaming and wailing. For a moment the scene was chaos.

Merthin rushed to Caris’s side and tried to protect her, with his body, from the stampede.

The intruders saw their fallen comrade and they all paused in their rush, suddenly shocked into stillness. By the light of their torches they could see that he was unquestionably dead, his neck sliced almost all the way through, his blood spilled copiously over the stone floor of the cloisters. They looked around, moving their heads from side to side, peering through the holes in their hoods, looking like fish in a stream.

One of them spotted Thomas’s cleaver, red with blood, lying on the ground next to Thomas and Caris, and pointed at it to show the others. With a grunt of anger, he drew a sword.

Merthin was terrified for Caris. He stepped forward, attracting the swordsman’s attention. The man moved towards Merthin and raised his weapon. Merthin retreated, drawing the man away from Caris. As the danger to her receded he felt more frightened for himself. Walking backwards, shaking with fear, he slipped on the dead man’s blood. His feet flew from under him and he fell flat on his back.

The swordsman stood over him, weapon raised high to kill him.

Then one of the others intervened. He was the tallest of the intruders, and moved with surprising speed. With his left hand, he grabbed the upraised arm of Merthin’s assailant. He must have had authority, for without speaking he simply shook his hooded head from side to side in negation, and the swordsman lowered his weapon obediently.

Merthin noticed that his saviour wore a mitten on his left hand, but nothing on the right.

The interaction lasted only as long as it might take a man to count to ten, and ended as suddenly as it had begun. One of the hooded men turned towards the kitchen and broke into a run, and the others followed. They must have pla

Merthin stood still, unsure what to do. Should he run after the intruders, go up to the dormitory and find out why the nuns were screaming, or find out where the fire was?

He knelt beside Caris. “Is Thomas alive?” he said.

“I think he’s banged his head, and he’s unconscious, but he’s breathing, and there’s no blood.”

Behind him, Merthin heard the familiar voice of Sister Joan. “Help me, please!” He turned. She stood in the doorway of the refectory, her face lit up grotesquely by the candle lamp in her hand, her head wreathed in smoke like a fashionable hat. “For God’s sake, come quickly!”

He stood up. Joan disappeared back into the refectory, and Merthin ran after her.

Her lamp threw confusing shadows, but he managed to avoid falling over the furniture as he followed her to the end of the room. Smoke was pouring from a hole in the floor. Merthin saw immediately that the hole was the work of a careful builder: it was perfectly square, with neat edges and a well-made trapdoor. He guessed this was the nuns’ hidden treasury, built in secrecy by Jeremiah. But tonight’s thieves had found it.

He got a lungful of smoke, and coughed. He wondered what was burning down there, and why, but he had no intention of finding out – it looked too dangerous.

Then Joan screamed at him: “Tilly is in there!”

“Dear God,” Merthin said despairingly; and he went down the steps.

He had to hold his breath. He peered through the smoke. Despite his fear, his builder’s eye noticed that the spiral stone staircase was well made, each step exactly the same size and shape, and each set at precisely the same angle to the next; so that he was able to go down with confidence even when he could not see what was underfoot.

In a second he reached the underground chamber. He could see flames near the middle of the room. The heat was intense, and he knew he would not be able to stand it for more than a few instants. The smoke was thick. He was still holding his breath, but now his eyes began to water, and his vision blurred. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and peered into the murk. Where was Tilly? He could not see the floor.

He dropped to his knees. Visibility improved slightly: the smoke was less dense lower down. He moved around on all fours, staring into the corners of the room, sweeping with his hands where he could not see. “Tilly!” he shouted. “Tilly, where are you?” The smoke caught in his throat and he suffered a coughing fit that would have drowned any reply she made.

He could not last any longer. He was coughing convulsively, but every breath seemed to choke him with more smoke. His eyes watered copiously and he was nearly blind. In desperation, he went so close to the fire that the flames began to singe his sleeve. If he collapsed and lost consciousness, he would die for certain.

Then his hand touched flesh.

He grabbed. It was a human leg, a small leg, a girl’s leg. He pulled her towards him. Her clothes were smouldering. He could hardly see her face and could not tell whether she was conscious, but she was tied hand and foot with leather thongs, so she could not move of her own accord. Striving to stop coughing, he got his arms under her and picked her up.

As soon as he stood upright the smoke became blindingly thick. Suddenly he could not remember which way the stairs were. He staggered away from the flames and crashed into the wall, almost dropping Tilly. Left or right? He went left and came to a corner. Changing his mind, he retraced his steps.

He felt as if he was drowning. His strength gone, he dropped to his knees. That saved him. Once again he found he could see better close to the floor, and a stone step appeared, like a vision from heaven, right in front of him.

Desperately holding on to the limp form of Tilly, he moved forward on his knees and made it to the staircase. With a last effort, he got to his feet. He put one foot on the lowest step and hauled himself up; then he managed the next step. Coughing uncontrollably, he forced himself upward until there were no more steps. He staggered, fell to his knees, dropped Tilly and collapsed on the refectory floor.

Someone bent over him. He spluttered: “Close the trapdoor – stop the fire!” A moment later he heard a bang as the wooden door slammed shut.

He was grabbed under the arms. He opened his eyes for a moment and saw Caris’s face, upside down; then his vision blurred. She dragged him across the floor. The smoke thi

He gasped, coughed, gasped and coughed. Slowly he began to breathe more normally. His eyes stopped watering, and he saw that dawn was breaking. The faint light showed him a crowd of nuns standing around him.

He sat upright. Caris and another nun dragged Tilly out of the refectory and put her beside him. Caris bent over her. Merthin tried to speak, coughed, and tried again. “How is she?”

“She’s been stabbed through the heart,” Caris said. She began to cry. “She was dead before you got to her.”