She spun back. Immediately that sense of an unseen presence vanished. It was only an overgrown mound with a passageway blocked by stone slabs.
But Villam had a strange expression on his face. “I had a sudden feeling,” he said, and shook himself. “As if something clutched at me, trying to find out what I was, just as a blind man might grope at what is before him because he can only see and recognize it with his fingers.”
“Let us move away from here,” said Rosvita.
“I will fetch my son,” he said, “and meet you at the path.”
He hurried away. Cautiously, she turned her back to the mound. Again, she felt the unseen presence, but more muted, as if it was keeping its distance. It took a great deal of resolve for her to walk away from the mound toward the trail without looking back over her shoulder.
Villam and Berthold and the men-at-arms met her at the trail, which was scarcely more than a parting of branches. It led into the trees. But she took not more than one hundred steps, sloping down, before she found herself at a rocky outcropping. There rose a spring from a defile. Set back against tree and rock was a tiny hut. It had fresh plaster on the outside walls. Moss grew on the roof, giving the thatch a coat of green.
She became aware of the wind soughing through the trees and the clack of branches against rock, of the chitter of small creatures, hushing as the horses stamped, and the singing of birds in the boughs above.
It had been completely, unnaturally, silent in the clearing of fallen stones. There had been no sound but what they had brought with them or made by their own efforts.
Here it was quiet but not silent. Villam and his men stood respectfully back while she approached the hut. A bench hewn from a log sat in front of the door, which was built of many branches lashed together. This crude door had no latch. A small opening, about the length and breadth of her arm from hand to elbow, was cut into the bottom of the door.
She knelt and spoke in a soft voice.
“Brother Fidelis. I am Rosvita of Korvei. I am come to beg speech of you.”
Nothing. No reply, no sound from within the hut. It was so miserably proportioned that Rosvita could not imagine that a man would ever truly be comfortable in there, never able to stand completely upright nor to lay down at full extension.
“Brother Fidelis?”
Nothing.
She had a horrible sudden fear he was dead. But that would be no terrible thing if the old hermit had died peacefully as he meditated and was then borne up to the Chamber of Light by angels. It would certainly be disappointing, for there was much she had hoped to learn from him. She smiled ruefully, aware her desire for learning caused her heart to be restless and thus not always able to single-mindedly contemplate the mercy of Our Lady’s and Lord’s Grace, as she ought.
Still, no sound. But what if the thing from the mound had taken him? What if some thing did live here on the height of the hill, an old thing, unused to company and jealous of its privacy, hating all things that still walked with confidence in the light of day?
But then, faintly, she heard a rustling.
“Brother Fidelis?”
His voice was like the whisper of leaves stirred along the forest floor by a searching wind. “Recite to me something from your new work, this history of the Wendish people that you labor over, Sister Rosvita.”
“I have not brought it with me,” she said, startled by this request.
“I am humbled for my curiosity.” She heard amusement in that dry, quiet voice and a trace of a Salian accent in the way he pronounced the Wendish words. “But it is ever thus, my friend, that my heart seeks peace while my mind is yet restless.” She smiled, and as if he had seen that smile, he continued. “So is it with you, I believe, Sister. But you did not come here to receive my confession.”
This surprised her even more. “Are you wishing to give a confession, Brother? Of course I will hear you, if you are driven to speak.”
“I am full of sin, as are we all who live on this earth. I have been a faithful son of the church, but alas, my heart has not always been faithful to Our Lady and Lord. Devils have appeared to tempt me.”
The door of lashed branches stared at her, revealing nothing except the smooth coat of wood worn clean by time. Of course at this moment she wanted nothing more than to know in what guise devils had appeared to tempt Brother Fidelis. He was as old as Mother Otta, of a great age, having passed nine or even ten decades, or so it was said in Hersford Monastery. But it was not usual for a woman to hear the confession of a monk; that was done by a male cleric or one of the fraters. Most monks turned away explicitly from the world and that included the ministrations of deacons, who were of course all women.
