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Ground lifted under their feet; they met a stone retaining wall about waist-high, and then scrambled up the steep slope. Whatever it was that grew there was tough, only giving a little under their boots with a ripping sound and a sharp green smell, but it was slick with rain and liquid mud from the soil below, and they had to bend double and pull themselves up with their hands as well. It was a relief to stop when they ran into the stone and concrete of the wall, to rest against the rough surface and let their hearts slow; the bad part of that was that it made him feel how the rain sucked heat out of his body. Even with the rain and the dead blackness of an overcast night, he still felt conspicuous in his black outfit against the whitewashed wall; a little light leaked out from the arrow-slits in the towers above, enough to make out his hand in front of his face.
Of course, my eyesight isn't of the best. Thank God for hard contacts, what?
John Hordle muttered something about hoping the monks could haul them up, but the expected knotted rope or Jacob's Ladder didn't appear. Instead their guide drew his dagger and pounded sharply on the wall in some sort of signal, with a dull clunk sound that made him think the pommel was made of lead. And there was something a little wrong about it even so:
"Be ready," the Mount Angel warrior said as he stepped aside.
A chunk of wall about four feet tall and three wide slid up soundlessly, with a smoothness that argued for counterweighted levers. The five of them went through into the gaping maw behind, Hordle swearing mildly at the way it cramped his huge form; as they passed the door, Nigel saw that it was stone and concrete covering a plate of steel. When the last of them passed, it sank back into place with a sough of displaced air, arguing for a nearly hermetic seal; more steel sounded on steel as bars went home with a chunk sound. Then a lantern was unshuttered. It was dim enough, but almost painfully bright to eyes so long in the darkness, showing a short arched tu
The round, unremarkable face of the third figure, carrying the lantern, was framed in a visored sallet helm much like the one Nigel Loring ordinarily wore himself, but he could have sworn:
"I am Sister Antonia."
Well, well. It is a woman. I wouldn't have expected it of Catholics, and rather old-fashioned ones, from what I've heard.
"Do you wish to see the abbot at once? You must have all had a very hard day."
"Thank you, Sister," Nigel said politely, smoothing his mustache with one finger.
The young woman's smile was charming and showed dimples; she wore a dark robe over what looked like three-quarter armor: breast-and-back, vambraces, tassets, mail sleeves.
"But if he's available-" the Englishman went on.
"Certainly, Sir Nigel. And to answer your question, I'm a Sister of the Queen of Angels Monastery, which has always been closely associated with Mount Angel. Please follow me, sirs, ladies."
Nigel shrugged, slightly embarrassed-assuming something that looked odd was odd had become a habit since the Change-and did so. Sister Antonia picked up a poleax in her other hand and trotted tirelessly upward despite the weight of her gear, which the Englishman knew from long personal experience would be considerable. Motion made the lantern sway, casting huge moving shadows in the tall stairwell, and the echoes of their rubber-soled shoes and the nun's hobnails provided a background of squeak and clatter. The effort of his own seven-story climb was welcome, warming him a little in his sodden clothes and squelching shoes. The concrete walls themselves were dry and smooth, and the soil around them probably well drained; this was obviously recent work, not more than a few years old. He wondered how the hilltop community managed for water.
Cisterns, I suppose, he thought. And possibly deep wells with wind pumps, boreholes would do if they had to go down four hundred feet or better from the hilltop. They certainly have some good engineers.
After an interminable time they came out into large dim cellars used as storerooms, stretching off into the distance. They were piled with sacks of grain and dried peas and beans, barrels of beer and wine and salt pork and beef, plastic trash containers recycled to hold sharp-smelling sauerkraut, flitches of bacon and hams hanging from racks, and great banks of metal office shelving supporting glass Mason jars of preserved fruits and vegetables and meats. Then they went up a much shorter flight of metal stairs and through an iron grillwork door and into a ready room-cum-armory, with poleaxes and crossbows racked around the walls. A sparse four armed men and two women sat at a table that could have seated twenty; Nigel smiled to himself at the sight of their stifled yawns. Military boredom seemed to be a universal characteristic, although most soldiers he knew wouldn't have a breviary open to pass the time. The guards nodded silently, gravely polite.
"You must be cold and hungry," Sister Antonia said. It was the first time she'd spoken since greeting them, but it had been a calm, friendly silence. "Please, this way."
Another flight of stairs and they were in what he suspected had been the Abbey before the Change, rooms modern-seeming but plain, dim except for the one lantern and occasional gas night-lights burning on wall brackets, turned down low behind their glass shields. Unlike the guardroom they were far from empty, but the people in them looked to be ordinary civilians, not monastics, many children and young mothers among them, asleep-not surprising given the late hour-on improvised pallets. There was a surprising absence of clutter or mess or smell, and Nigel knew from bitter experience how hard that was to avoid when you crammed displaced people into unfamiliar surroundings.
"This was our guesthouse," Sister Antonia said. "These folk are refugees from our outlying villages and farms."
Which confirms my guess: probably the town itself is full to the gills, if the surplus is here.
"Baths here, Sir Nigel, for you and your men. And in the next room for you, Lady Astrid, Lady Eilir. Then something to eat, and Abbot Dmwoski will be pleased to speak with you."
The bathrooms were literally that, with a row of big tin tubs, and all the plumbing post-Change, with pipes ru
"Never 'ad much to do with monks," he said meditatively. "Even the Crow-ley Dads." That Anglican order had grown spectacularly in England since the Change-several hundred times, relative to the surviving total population. "Eilir says this lot have a good reputation. Certainly the one who showed up when we had the brush with the bandits and Sir Jason: "
"Father Andrew," Alleyne put in.
"He was a good sort. Tough as nails, mind you, but not mean with it. And the militiamen with him, they were just farmers and cobblers or what-'ave-you, but they liked him-couple of them knocked back enough to let their secrets out, if you know what I mean. They had nothing but good to say of Abbot Dmwoski."
Alleyne nodded thoughtfully. "They must be fairly formidable to have lasted this long, though, Father. They're right between Molalla and Gervais. This fort would be invulnerable to anything but paratroopers, but they had to survive long enough to build it, and hold onto the lands around it."