The Lazarus Vault

IV

The count is still kneeling at the altar, but his head lies several feet away. Tendrils of blood stretch out around him, the body desperate to reclaim its missing flesh. His guards are at the door, but even they seem shocked by what they see. The chapel has become a slaughterhouse.

I think of a boy kneeling before a different altar, a different place very far away. A different world.

How did I come to this?

I kneel in front of the bishop. My scalp itches where I had my tonsure shaved this morning; my skin itches from the coarse wool of the cassock they have forced me to wear. The stones on the floor are cold and hard against my knees.

A crowd has come to witness this moment: my brother Ralph and my father, his steward and his vavasours in the front rank, as well as the abbot of Saint David’s, who hopes I will bring a portion of my inheritance to his monastery one day. Behind them stand my mother and my sisters; behind them the servants, serfs, their wives and their children. Fifty or sixty souls, all dependent on my father to settle their disputes, protect their homes and collect their taxes. Not all of them are grateful for it. I can feel their bitter stares like knives at my back as I kneel there. I am their enemy.

I know why this is, though I don’t understand it. They are Welshmen, Britons, and I am a Norman. But I was born here and so was my father. I have never set foot in Normandy. I have heard the stories, of course: how Duke William claimed the crown of England from the usurper Harold; how my great-grandfather Enguerrand fought with him at Hastings and slew seventeen Englishmen; how my grandfather Ralph followed the Earl of Clare into Wales and was rewarded with the lands my father now holds. I love these stories of knights and battles. I am forever pestering Brother Oswald, the monk who teaches me, to repeat them. He prefers stories of saints and Jesus.

At this age, it has not occurred to me that there is another side to these stories. That every time my ancestors’ swords fall or their lances drive home, they land on the ancestors of the men who now stand glaring at the back of the church.

The bishop wears a ring, a thick gold band with a blue stone. The gold presses into my skin as he lays his hand on my forehead. I stare at the stone and try not to cry. I don’t want to become a priest. I want to be a knight, like Ralph. Already, I can spar with a wooden sword and gallop my father’s palfrey across the meadow by the river. But knights are expensive: there are horses to buy and keep fed, arms and tack to keep in good repair, squires and grooms to pay to maintain them. Priests are much cheaper. My father says a knight only turns a profit in time of war; a priest has his living every year.

The bishop leans forward. His breath smells of onions.

‘You are about to take up a holy office. Do you swear these solemn oaths? To reject the snares of this world and turn yourself to Christ?’

I fight back the urge to look over my shoulder. I know Ralph is watching and I hope he is proud.

‘To refrain from shedding blood.’

I ball my hand in a fist to hide the bloodstain. I was out at dawn checking the traps Ralph and I had laid in the forest. We’d caught a woodpigeon; I wrung its neck with my own hands.

‘To be chaste.’

I’m happy to swear that, though I don’t know what it means. I’m eight years old.

‘Peter of Camros, the Church claims you as her own.’

That night, I lie on my mattress between my dog and my brother, and whisper the oaths back to myself. They seem so heavy with meaning. It’s the first time I have been treated as an adult. I do not like the path that has been chosen for me, but I promise God I will honour my vows to Him.

I cannot imagine, then, how utterly I will break every one of them.